The Grass Memorial

by Sarah Harrison

  Spencer knew that this was his cue to step into the breach to say that he would take on responsibility for the store and the repair business, and launch them into the brave new post-war world with the McColl colours flying proudly. He felt it, though there was no special tone in Mack’s voice and he didn’t look at Spencer in any particular way. This was the moment, all right. But he let it pass. A kind of panic stopped his throat. Later, he thought perhaps it hadn’t been panic but simple common sense. If his parents’ business needed turning round, there was someone out there in Moose Draw who would like nothing more, whose heart would be in it and whose head would be suited to it. But that person wasn’t him.

  Common sense or not, he burned with embarrassment during the long silence that followed. And it was left to him to end it, by saying lamely: ‘Something’ll come up. You could still sell it as a going concern.’

  ‘We live here,’ said Mack simply.

  ‘You could get a little place out of town.’

  Mack didn’t reply to this. Spencer had the squirmy feeling he used to get as a boy when Mack disapproved not exactly of something he’d said or done, but of something he was, something he could do nothing about. They let it lie there among the motorbike parts, the bit that didn’t fit.

  Unloading a box of canned fruit on to the shelves that evening, when Mack was listening to the radio out back, he put out a few feelers on the subject to Caroline.

  ‘Time must be coming you’ll want to get away from all this.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She was running a soft polishing cloth over the counter. ‘It’s my life.’ She dusted the till slowly, almost affectionately, as if wiping a child’s face. ‘The only one I know.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ He’d said it before he meant to and instantly regretted it, but she didn’t break rhythm.

  ‘The only one I care to know. I’m quite content with it, Spencer.’

  He could sort of see how it was with them – that to his mother this life was a safe haven after what had preceded it. While to Mack it was his pride, his identity, how he’d provided for his own.

  He said, to get it out of the way: ‘I don’t think I could be content with it.’

  ‘No.’ Now she did stop, and looked at him levelly. ‘No, you mustn’t.’

  ‘I know it’s what Mack would like—’

  ‘He’ll understand.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘He’ll understand because I do, and I’ll explain.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She continued with her cleaning, her back to him now as she ran the cloth along the shelves behind the counter. ‘So what will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘You should take your time, Spencer. We’ll be glad of the help while you make up your mind.’

  ‘And what will you do, Mom?’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘What other people do! Carry on as long as possible and then sell up.’

  Something occurred to him. ‘Mack could get work at the new garage. I bet they’d be glad to have him.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ She folded the duster carefully and laid it on the counter, smoothing it with her hands. ‘He might be too old. And he’s awfully used to being his own boss.’

  ‘It’s worth thinking about. I couldn’t suggest it, but you could.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He sensed her divided loyalties – his commonsense suggestion against Mack’s stubborn independence, her desire to be fair to both – and was filled with love and admiration. But he had lost his old childhood habit of intimacy and directness with her, and all he could say was, ‘Mom, I ready appreciate you being so understanding.’

  To which she replied: ‘It’s what I’m here for.’ And that, at least, was like old times.

  * * * * *

  There still remained the problem of what he was going to do, and it had become more urgent now that it was generally accepted he would be moving on. He continued to help Mack, but this was now seen by both of them as a mere token job. Spencer was asked to do less and less and felt his position to be an awkward one. He’d stated a wish to be independent. Mack seemed to be saying, now he must act on it.

  There were other more tangible imperatives. Spencer took only a bare minimum from Mack, and money was running out. He bought himself a boneshaker whose only claim to glamour was that it was a convertible, so that if he chose he could inhale the clouds of dust as he clattered along the country roads. But at least he was free to come and go, and to think, in a way which he couldn’t with Mack and his mother watching him.

  He drove out to Buck’s and was dismayed by how small and shabby it seemed. The cabins reminded him of a scaled down version of the Church Norton airbase, and the main house was dilapidated, with a sagging porch and scabby paintwork.

  Boldly, because it all seemed so long ago, he rang the bell and was standing there waiting for an answer when a voice behind him said: ‘You could wait till hell freezes over there, son.’

  He turned round and saw that it was Abel Stone, the oldest of the team of labourers and handymen before the war.

  ‘Abe – hi there.’ He came down the steps, saw that he wasn’t recognised, and added: ‘Spencer McColl, remember me?’

  ‘Spencer . . . Well, put it there boy. Well, I’ll be . . . So you came back to us safe. Read about you in the paper.’

  Spencer felt the hard, callused palm as they shook hands, and Abel gripped his elbow in a display of real emotion. Spencer was touched, but embarrassed. The conquering hero stuff seemed so undeserved and out of place when all he’d done was to escape, and do the one thing he’d always dreamed of.

  ‘So what goes on, Abe?’ He nodded at the house. ‘All closed up?’

  ‘Sold. New owners coming in any day.’

  ‘You still got a job?’

  ‘Sure, they kinda bought me up with the lot. Old timer like me, bit of local colour, I guess . . . But the place’ll be closed till next spring, all kindsa improvements.’ Abel spoke the last word with a disparaging emphasis. ‘Swimming pool, movie theatre, new cabins. Customers’ll never know they left town.’

  Spencer shrugged despairingly. ‘That’s progress.’

  ‘Maybe. I ain’t complaining. So long as I got something to do.’

  ‘They keep the horses?’

  ‘Some – Charlie and Ross are looking after ’em and there’ll be new stock coming in in the spring. And I forgot to say – there’s going to be a plane doing joyrides out over the mountains. How about you flying that, Spencer? Give the dudes a bit of a thrill. I reckon the new owners’d be pleased as punch to have an air ace taking the customers up.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Abe. I’m not sure I could work here again – never go back, can you understand that?’

  Abel cast him a wry look. ‘Guess so. But then, what would I know? I never moved on. Never wanted to.’

  ‘Mind if I take a walk around?’

  ‘Liberty hall, no one’s to stop you ’cept me.’

  Spencer set off up the canyon. Away from the ranch itself the evidence of disuse was different, not deterioration but the opposite, a greedy reassertion of nature, so that the track was narrower, and the scrub and branches held out whiskery hands to drag at him as he passed. After a mile and a half or so he came to the first picnic lodge almost without realising it, for the neat wooden frame was netted with convolvulus and half-hidden by long grass and weeds, so that it looked like a cottage from some child’s storybook in which he might find people in an enchanted sleep. But when he went to take a look it was all he could do to force the door open, and the only living thing was some animal that scuttled violently away, stirring the air with a strong, musky smell.

  He pulled the door shut again – he wasn’t sure why – and continued on his way. As the canyon sides got steeper and the path rose, so it became less overgrown. He climbed till he emerged on to the open hillside and now, suddenly, he was in a time warp, for here nothing had changed. He made his way to Lottie’s
stone and sat down next to it, feeling a sense of companionship. The famous writer had died a couple of years ago in sad and murky circumstances which hinted at alcoholism and suicide, or Spencer might have expected him to come riding up the slope out of the woods.

  It was peaceful and Spencer’s mind, which had felt cramped and restricted since his return began to expand and examine the possibilities. Perhaps it was remembering the writer, or just being here, above the treeline and away from Moose Draw, but he began to sense a pattern of connections between past and present. He thought of his mother as a child, gazing out of the gable window and over the treetops of Victory Gardens. She had dreamed of boundless possibilities out there, beyond the water, and with the advent of his father realisation of the dream must have seemed within her grasp. There had followed disillusion, rescue, and reality, with all its limitations and compromises. He’d come up here as a boy to look out over the trees and speculate about Lottie, and think about what it might be like to escape Moose Draw – a small place in a vast landscape – with no idea what that escape might be. He remembered the writer’s comment that the frightened little mare had not really wanted freedom. Spencer McColl had wanted freedom all right, but been scared of it. The barely contained ferocity of the captive bucking horse had showed him what was really meant by the need to be free. And then he’d seen that little plane, wheeling and swooping ecstatically in the blue, the closest thing to a bird that a man could be, a paradigm of freedom, and that had encapsulated the dream. That was a perspective which would put Moose Draw in its place and turn Wyoming from a prison into a map, softening into haze at its edges, full of endless possibilities.

  He lay down on his back and stared into the sky. Right on cue an eagle appeared and did its stuff – a long, slow glide followed by a watchful turn, pinions spread like fingers. He could see only that elegant black silhouette, but way up there the eagle’s opaque yellow eyes would be making out every hair on his head, the buttons on his shirt, his own eyes, slitted against the light . . .

  He closed them. He’d lived his dream – had flown up there like the eagle, had seen not just towns but whole countries reduced to a map, had experienced the heady combination of breathtaking freedom and stifling enclosure that was man-made flying. And with it the awesome complexity of half-understood relationships that had opened up dark and untravelled spaces in his own head. One dream had been fulfilled, but the effect of its fulfilment had been to leave more questions unresolved than answered. There was another dream out there, he could almost feel it at his shoulder, hovering near, close but not showing itself. Yet.

  He was possessed by a sudden surge of happy certainty, a release from the tension and frustration that had been building up since his return. He was suddenly sure that this other dream would reveal itself, that some inspiration would be vouchsafed him. He only had to wait.

  Nonetheless, he was prompted that evening to look along the bookshelves in his room and revisit the work of the famous writer. Spencer had three books of his: the novel they had studied at high school; an autobiographical volume dealing with the writer’s experiences in the Dardanelles in the first world war; and another of twenty collected columns and articles spanning the writer’s career, on topics ranging from cookery to cattle-driving. This last had belonged to Frank, it was a little legacy that Spencer had willed to himself, and now it was the one he chose, and went to lie down on the bed with his ankles crossed to browse through it.

  He left the window open and the sounds of the main drag floated in: kids playing, the sound of cars slowing down after the roller-coaster of the country road, and that of less-tuned engines ticking over while their owners gazed under the hood; a dog barking; a distant telephone bell, still unusual enough in Moose Draw to be noticeable; a woman calling that supper was ready . . . And the smells, the small local ones of cooking and gasolene and cut grass, scattered randomly over that big, pervasive scent of prairie and mountain – the smell, as Spencer thought of it, of space. In a moment there was the pungent whiff of weather-proofing fluid, and he heard the rasp of Mack’s brush as he began painting the store front, an annual ritual associated with this time of year.

  Caroline’s soft quick tread on the stair, and then she appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Spencer?’

  He lowered the book. ‘Hey.’

  She came in and stood, arms folded. ‘What are you reading?’

  He showed her. ‘I went up to Buck’s this afternoon.’

  ‘It’s a little bit sad up there at the moment.’

  ‘Sure, but that’ll change soon enough.’

  ‘Is it good? The book?’

  ‘Haven’t read it yet.’ He was aware of wanting her to go, and ashamed of himself for wanting it.‘I brought it back from England.’

  She came in and sat on the end of the bed. It reminded him of when he was sick as a child. Then, she used to massage his feet through the bedclothes.

  She nodded towards the book. ‘He died not so long ago.’

  ‘I know.’

  She smiled. ‘Am I in the way?’

  ‘No. No, of course not.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ She pressed her hands down on her knees and smoothed them away from her. She’d always managed to keep her hands pretty, no matter what, but he noticed with a pang that there were one or two brown spots on the backs. Suddenly embarrassed by the potential intimacy of the situation he closed the book with a snap and sat up.

  ‘You are not.’

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ she said. ‘It’s just that you’re not sure where you are at the moment.’

  There was no comment he could make on this, so he remained silent and she added: ‘And I don’t know where you are, either.’

  ‘Right here.’ He was deliberately misinterpreting her, and they both knew it.

  ‘You miss the Airforce.’

  ‘Not really . . .’ He considered this. ‘Maybe. I wouldn’t want to go back to it, but I don’t know what to replace it with either.’

  ‘You have to take your time,’ she said.

  ‘Sure. But I need to get on with something.’

  ‘And you don’t need to stay here. Spencer. We shall be all right, you know.’ She smiled. ‘We may be dunces, but we got this far after all.’

  He knew what she was doing, relieving him of responsibility, telling him not to worry, but it was having the opposite effect, unsettling him. Just now he wanted her to leave, but in his way he needed her and Mack, more than they needed him.

  ‘What do you mean, dunces?’ He gave her a nudge, lightening the atmosphere.

  ‘We haven’t been very adventurous with our lives.’

  ‘They’ve been good lives. Mom. I had a war, that’s all.’

  Suddenly and wholly unexpectedly she put her arms round him, and laid her head in the crook of his neck and shoulder. It was the first time he was fully aware of how much smaller she was these days. His head used to rest on her shoulder like that: he had outgrown her.

  ‘Mom?’ Not sure of her mood he touched her back awkwardly with short light stroking movements. ‘You okay?’

  She nodded against him, but meant no. He was appalled, thrown off balance, prayed she wouldn’t cry. He had never seen her cry, didn’t know how he’d cope with it. But luckily for him the moment was interrupted first by a loud ‘Damn!’ from outside, and then Mack’s voice at the door calling, ‘Cairlahn! Cairlahn, you got a Band Aid?’

  She straightened up and rose in one quick, smooth movement. ‘Coming!’

  Spencer didn’t see her face, but then he didn’t try that hard.

  For a few minutes he listened absently to her dealing with Mack’s splinter, the familiar tinny sound of the kitchen first-aid box, the splash of tap water, their combined murmurings. Mack explaining what had happened, her saying gently he should be more careful, something like that . . . Spencer hoped she wouldn’t come back up.

  But of course she didn’t. The spell was broken, they would both pretend their separate moments of we
akness had never happened. In a while he heard the boisterous sounds of Vic Lander’s City Variety on the radio, and from outside the sibilant rasp of Mack’s brush working once more on the fence. Cautiously, he lay back down and picked up the book.

  He read several pieces rapidly. He was taken with them, not so much by the style, with which he was familiar, but by the content. What struck him was that the writer had done many things, and also that many of them were quite ordinary. Sure, he’d been a short-order cook and a crack shot, and ridden the white water on the Colorado. But some of the articles were about everyday stuff, the sort of thing anyone might experience, like having to bathe a cat when it got fleas – it made Spencer laugh out loud – and getting nervous over a date with a pretty woman (having met the writer in person Spencer found this last hard to imagine, but it was still entertaining). There was a kind of note that was struck, it said everything better than you could have done but it also said this guy was on your side, he saw things the same way you did – it was all part of life.

  There was one chapter about riding a freight train right across the centre of America. Or at least riding several, hopping on and off, being part of a hobo community, trundling, walking, talking, moving on, striking up friendships and leaving them behind, easy come, easy go . . . Spencer was enchanted. The evening began to darken and he had to switch on the light. It was only when a flittering cloud of moths and bugs had gathered round the light, pattering on the shade and meeting sticky, hissing deaths on the bulb, that he tore himself away from the pages and went to pull down the blind. There was an enormous moon like a Hallowe’en lantern in the sky and Moose Draw was reduced to a little huddle of dim lights beneath it. The sky was not quite dark and the great craggy shoulders of the mountains stood out black against it.

  Not bothering with the blind he turned out the light and went downstairs. Caroline was in the parlour, Mack was washing his hands at the kitchen sink. He had a way of holding his big hands under the running water when he was rinsing the soap off, just holding them there, first palm up, then backs up, like hands in a Bible picture, but for the Band-aid. He turned the tap off, gave them a shake and wiped them on the towel. He still carried a faint smell of weather-proofing.