"Why are you showing me this?"
"I talked to that fellow you used to work with. He said you've been drifting for more'n three years. It's time you settled down." Then more slowly, he said, "I'd like to sell the business to you."
Next time I get my hands on Roger Blakeley, I'm going to wring his scrawny neck! He laid the papers carefully on Bernie's desk.
"What I do is none of your goddam business, Bernie." He spun on his heel and walked out.
Interfering bastard. Always thinking he knows what's best. He's my partner, not my mother. Someone spoke a greeting but Gus didn't look around. He crossed Third Avenue and cut across the Lundquist Market parking lot into the abandoned fields behind. Be damned if I'll settle down. There's nothing here for me. Not a damned thing!
His pants leg caught on the barbwire of the fallen-down fence along Gypsum Street, and he cursed under his breath. I should've left the first time I thought about it, instead of letting myself get suckered into working on that fool May Fest.
This end of the park was unimproved, a mini-wilderness of sagebrush and cheatgrass, threaded with dusty paths. He followed the one that crossed Little Hackberry Creek, almost dry now. A pair of mallards burst into flight as he emerged from the sagebrush, startling him. Stupid birds. Can't you find anything better than this godforsaken place?
He jumped the narrow stream, continued along the path until it ended atop the steep bank of Hackberry Creek. Angular boulders stabilized the slope, prevented erosion. Gus found one with a flat surface and sat, staring out across the opposite hillside.
Below him, cattails surrounded a clear spring-fed pond. On one of them sat a yellow-headed bird, singing its heart out. He had to smile but quickly stifled it. The only thing holding me here is in my britches. Like Sally said, there are no promises between us.
It's just sex.
He didn't move.
Where would he run?
He'd traveled nearly ten thousand miles over the past three years, lived in a dozen different rooms, done whatever unskilled labor he could find.
And I still haven't found peace.
"I'm not looking for peace! I just want to forget!"
Bullshit! It's forgiveness I need, not forgetfulness.
He'd never forgiven himself for Marilyn's death, but lately he'd begun to think he could eventually come to accept that he might not have been able to prevent it. Oh, he was at fault, and he'd live with the sorrow all his life. He'd told her the steering was squirrelly, that he'd get it fixed as soon as he could. But he'd been in the middle of a project and had set everything else aside.
She could have taken her car to the shop—
"I should have done it." Yet for some reason, he'd lost some of the oppressive guilt that had weighed on his conscience for three years. Marilyn's death seemed somehow distant, an old ache rather than an immediate pain.
"What the hell's wrong with me?" He knew he could have prevented the tragedy that had robbed him of all he held dear. Knew he could have...
But could I? Short of staying home and watching over Marilyn every minute, could I have kept her from doing what she wanted when she wanted?
The answer came, with a total certainty.
No.
"No. She wouldn't listen to anyone when she had her mind made up. Even her mother admitted she acted first and thought later, if at all."
And I helped spoil her, just as everyone else did. She was so lovely, so easy to pamper, to indulge. And she always made me feel so special.
The world around him blurred, and Gus blinked rapidly to clear his vision. But it wouldn't clear. It swam. He tasted salt and realized he was weeping.
I loved her. I trusted her to take care of Emily. And she failed.
Gus realized that he was, for the first time, admitting he'd been blaming Marilyn as much as himself. But I loved her. I really did. So I have to forgive her.
As for Emily...
No. Don't go there. Not now. Not yet.
He was preternaturally aware of the tangy scent of sagebrush on the fitful breeze, the distant cries of playing children. The sun was hot on his bare arms, and heat waves shimmered above the desert, creating motion where there was none. He felt out of place, out of time. Slowly, he sank back to his rocky seat, no longer fighting the tears that flowed freely, no longer stifling the sobs that shook him.
Washing away the guilt, the anger. Leaving only an eternal emptiness in his heart.
Gus was subdued that night when Sally arrived at his apartment. His kisses were nice, but that was all.
Gus's kisses had never been merely nice before.
She resisted the urge to cling. If she'd ever needed to be loved, it was tonight, but she'd be darned if she'd beg for it.
"Something's bothering you."
He shook his head. "A long day, that's all."
His hands, familiar, knowing, stroked down her spine, but in gentle affection, not in passion.
Yet Sally was comforted. If he would only hold her, just like this, in the days to come. Give her the strength to accept Dr. Berman's latest prognosis.
"Juana and I took Pop in to the doctor today."
Gus led her to the sofa. "Want to talk about it?"
"Not really. I'd rather not even think about it." She relaxed, for the first time all day. The regular rise and fall of his chest soothed her, the faint thump of his heart tranquilized. She tried to blank her mind.
It was impossible.
Finally she said, "I can't not think about it." With another sigh, she sat upright, slipping from under his sheltering arm.
Gus rose and went to the refrigerator, returned with a bottle of beer and a can of Fresca. "Your father's not getting better is he?" He sat on the other end of the sofa.
Sally stretched her legs out so she could tuck her feet under his thigh. She didn't want to cuddle while she unburdened her mind, but she needed the reassurance of his touch.
"He is going to die. Soon." She said finally, straight out, flatly, forcing herself to accept the reality. "He's been dying for a long time, but it was always going to happen someday—in the unforeseeable future." She had always clung to a tiny spark of hope that he might, against all odds, get better.
"Dr. Berman said that one of these days he will simply forget to breathe and that will be it." Biting her lip, she tried to keep the tears out of her voice. "Oh, Gus, I'm not ready. I don't think I'll ever be ready to say goodbye to him."
Gus swallowed. She saw the working of his throat, the tension in his jaw and the tendons of his neck. His hand tightened around the bottle of beer, until his knuckles were white. "You're never ready," he said, his voice low and raspy. "But at least you'll have the chance—" He clamped his mouth shut, his eyes. After a long pause, he said, sounding normal again, "How long did Dr. Berman give him?"
Sally shrugged. "It could be a week, a month." She forced her fist against her mouth, biting her knuckle until the pain overrode her need to wail her anguish. Her resentment. "It could be a year."
"Oh, God!" His words were as much a prayer as a curse. The next thing Sally knew, she was held tightly in his arms and he was rocking back and forth, crooning into her ear. "Let it go. Face it and it won't hurt so much. There, there." Over and over, until Sally found her throat opening and the burning of her tearless eyes more bearable.
Finally she took a deep breath and let it out on a long sigh. "Gus, I'm okay. Honest."
Although grateful for his compassion, she knew the last thing she needed right now was for someone else to feel sorry for her. She was doing a good job of it all by herself.
"You sure?" His embrace loosened.
"I guess what's really bothering me is that I want him to go," she said, and waited to see the contempt steal over his face at her admission. "I want him to die."
He didn't answer immediately. Staring into the mouth of his almost-empty beer bottle, he seemed thoroughly fascinated by its contents.
"'Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.' I got tha
t in a fortune cookie once." He drained his beer. "It's true."
Sally didn't see what he was getting at but didn't have the energy to ask. She felt as if any movement would be almost more than her exhausted body could manage, as if any thought would cost her what little mental energy remained to her.
Gus watched Sally as she sank farther and farther into silence. She was beyond despondence; she seemed almost dangerously depressed.
She needed someone to help her pull herself together, someone who could help her face and deal with this latest hurdle, but he didn't think he had the strength to lend her. So, he did the best he could to distract her.
"I really enjoyed the rodeo." He was careful to pronounce it "ro-dee-oh," as the locals did, with the accent on the first syllable. The first time he'd used the word, pronouncing it "ro-day-oh", Bernie had told him he sounded like a greenhorn Easterner. Well, he was, but he saw no reason to call attention to it.
"Ummm?" Sally's eyes opened, dull and lifeless.
"My grandfather took me to a rodeo in Madison Square Garden once, when I was nine or ten. I remember how exciting it was, especially the Brahma bull riders."
"I always hated them. I saw a clown get gored when I was pretty young, and never liked the Brahmas again." She shuddered.
"That would change how you looked at it," Gus agreed. At least she was talking, not just sitting there like a lump. "But what I liked best was the steer-roping and the cutting horse competition."
She had refused to leave her father and had insisted she didn't want him to stay in town over the Fourth just because she did. Gus had heard half a dozen arguments about whether the rodeo in Vale or the Jordan Valley event was the wildest and woolliest, so he went to both.
Sally said nothing, so he went on.
"There's a big difference between the rodeo I saw as a kid and those I saw this past weekend. And it wasn't just because they were outside. And smaller." He looked at her to see if she was listening. She seemed to be, but he couldn't be sure. "These seemed to be more or less family affairs, as if most of the contestants and the audience knew one another."
Her eyes were open but didn't appear to be seeing anything.
"There was one fellow—he must have been close to eighty—who rode one of the bucking horses backwards. When he fell off, the horse stopped bucking, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck with its teeth and carried him out of the arena."
"That's nice."
"Then there was the woman barrel racer," he continued, wanting a reaction but beginning to despair, "who wore a satin dancehall-girl outfit, complete with net stockings and high-heeled satin shoes. She won, too."
"Good for h— What did you say?"
Gus saw intelligence in her eyes once again and breathed a silent sigh of relief.
"Nothing. It wasn't important." He reached out to her and rejoiced when her hand met his. He pulled. She scooted to him and let him take her under his arm.
"I guess I wasn't listening," she said. "I seem to do that—get lost in my own thoughts—a lot these days."
"I think it's hard not to. It must be hell, waiting and knowing there's nothing you can do." He still envied her, in a way. At least she knew what was going to happen. She wouldn't be called at work to be told her life had been destroyed.
"It wouldn't be so hard if I could just convince myself it's all right to want it to be over."
Her breath caught, and he heard the agony in her voice.
"My mind tells me I'd be selfish to want him to go on living like...like he is now. My heart..." She turned her face into his neck.
Gus tightened his arms. After a few moments, he felt a tear trickling down his chest, then another. Again he stroked her back, knowing nothing he could do or say would make her feel one whit better.
Hating himself for the surge of desire that always accompanied the feel of her against his body.
He held her, forcing his own need into the oblivion it deserved. Finally, she sniffed a couple of times then raised her head.
"I'm sorry." Her voice was fogged with tears.
"It's okay. Sometimes we need to cry." He was sure of that now, for he had once needed the solace of tears, a solace that had been denied him by the strength of his guilt.
She sat back and wiped her eyes with the heel of one hand. "You must be getting really tired of my weeping all over you."
He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her.
Her lips trembled in a pathetic attempt at a smile and she shook her head. "No, I'll be all right now. Thanks for holding me." Her eyes were bloodshot, her nose red and her face splotchy. Her voice was tremulous, as if the tears still hovered just inside her throat.
But her chin was firm and her shoulders no longer drooped in depression.
"Sure?" he said, and wiped one last tear from her cheek.
"Sure." She tried to laugh and almost succeeded. "I've got to get home. Juana likes to get to bed about ten."
"I'll walk you home."
Always before she'd refused, telling him she enjoyed the time to herself, time to think. This time she merely nodded.
On the street, Gus reached for her hand. She let him, but did not respond to his gentle squeeze.
"Bernie called me into his office today." His voice was loud in the silence of the empty street.
"What did he want?"
"He wants to retire." He had been amazed to discover that Bernie was not in his early sixties, as he appeared, but seventy-three.
"Bernie's been wanting to retire for years." Sally stopped to look both ways before crossing a deserted Main Street. "I think he started to talk about it when I was in high school."
"He says he hasn't because he doesn't want to see the shop close." Gus could understand that. Bernie's grandfather had opened a livery stable in Whiterock almost before it was a town. He had installed the town's first gas pump, sold the town's first Ford to an early mayor. Cowles Implement had represented John Deere farm equipment for almost a century.
"It's kind of sad," Sally said, her voice a melancholy murmur in the night. "Bernie and Jim Guthrie, Wilma, Georgina and Jack, even Tom Holmes, down at the Chalk Pit. And Lyle. They're all so determined that Whiterock won't become a modern ghost town like Westfall or Harper. And it's all so futile."
"Futile?" He found he was a little irritated at her indifferent assumption that the people who were the core of the town were wasting their time and energy.
"Of course. Open your eyes, Gus. Look around." She gestured, although all either of them could see was the library and a few dark houses on the east side of Fifth Avenue. "You can't tell me this is a town with a future. When more than half the businesses are closed. When every year more of the young people move away."
"Pete and Lupe Gomez are young," he protested. "And Bill Holmes is coming back."
"The more fools they. Would you stay here, if you were young?"
A decision he had thought impossible turned out to be as simple as answering her question. "If I'd found this town twenty years ago, I might have been too dumb to see what it offers. But I'm older—and wiser, I hope—and I'm going to stay here."
"What do you mean?" With one hand on her front gate, she turned enough to look up into his face.
"I'm buying Cowles Implement. I'm investing in the future of Whiterock."
Her mouth dropped open. "You're kidding?"
"I've never been more serious." After a long, drifting time, he found his life had a purpose. "There's something special here, Sally, and I want to be part of it, to help it grow." Laughter bubbled out of him, as if it had been waiting to be set free. "Can't you feel it? The energy? If we can tap it, we can bring Whiterock back to life."
"I'm glad for you," she said, and stepped inside the gate. "Everyone should have a dream."
She turned and walked away, without so much as saying goodnight.
* * * *
"Aren't you going to see Gus tonight?" Juana said the next evening, when Sally settled beside her to watc
h Rio Lobo. Just what she needed, a good Western. Simple. Uncomplicated.
"Not tonight." She picked up her sewing basket. This latest bundle from Tsugawa Linen contained a pair of Pendleton wool slacks that needed taking in. She wanted to baste the alterations and send the slacks back for approval before she did any cutting.
"Problems?" Juana had become a real admirer of Gus's. She practically simpered whenever he dropped by after work or on weekends. And Gus, the big flirt, treated her like a sexy girl.
Sally would be highly insulted if a man acted toward her like that.
She nipped the thread with her teeth. "I don't think you'd call it a problem. I just decided I've been leaning on him too much lately." And weeping on him. In retrospect, she couldn't believe how often she'd soaked his shirt with her too-ready tears. "I don't want to become dependent on him, you know."
Juana muted the TV. "Why not? Isn't that what love is all about?"
"Love? Oh, come on, Juana. I'm not in love with Gus Loring." Of course, she wasn't. She was simply using him, as he was her, to fill her sexual needs while she waited for her father to die.
And if she found any day when she didn't see him colorless and blah—well, that was because so much of her life lately was bleak and dismal.
"I'd be a fool to fall in love with him, anyway. Do you know what he told me last night?"
Juana shook her head.
"He's going to buy Cowles Implement. Can you imagine? I don't think Bernie has made a profit the past five years, and Gus is going to buy him out."
"Lupe told me today," Juana said. "She and Pete are excited. Gus promised Pete he would be in charge of the garage."
The commercial ended, and she turned the sound back on.
Sally finished basting the pants along the lines marked for the new seams. Finding that the movie wasn't holding her interest, she went in to check on Pop.
He was sleeping peacefully. She sank into the chair beside his bed and took his hand. It lay flaccid in hers.
"You'd approve, Pop," she said, even knowing he could not hear, would not understand. "You always said what Whiterock needed was a little new blood and it would come back to life."
He'd always believed that the closure of so many of Whiterock's businesses was only temporary, the signs of a weak economy. When the market improved, he'd said, and he could reopen the mine, she'd see. Whiterock would thrive again.
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