by Mark Spragg
“It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.” She was sitting now, wadding the hose onto the seat of the chair to her side. She crossed a foot up on her knee and scratched at the arch.
“You think you’d want this house?” he asked.
“Like to live in?”
“Yeah.”
“Where would you go?”
He put the ham back in the refrigerator. “I’m retiring.”
She was staring into the living room as if she’d never noticed it before. “I read somewhere,” she said, “that you shouldn’t make decisions after someone close to you dies. Not for a year. Not big ones, anyway.”
“I was thinking about it before she died.”
She switched feet.
“That would make who, Hank Kosky, the sheriff?”
“You never know who people might vote for.”
She straightened her legs and held her feet together, stretching her toes. “You’d really leave?”
“I’ve been here most of my life.”
She sat up straight in her chair, tucking her legs back along the sides. “I think you should keep it. You could rent it to somebody in case you changed your mind.”
He sat down again. “She said she thought about what it would be like if I died.” He tried his coffee and it had gone cold, so he carried the cup to the sink. “She said it like it wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen.”
“That was just Mom.” She lifted her purse from the table, opening it on her lap and stuffing her pantyhose in.
“Will you take some of this food with you?”
She stood up. “Not tonight.”
“It’ll just go bad.”
“I’ll get it tomorrow. I thought I’d come over and box up some things. Her clothes. Some other stuff.”
“That doesn’t have to happen right away.”
“It’ll make me feel like I’m doing something.”
She had her purse slung over her shoulder and her shoes in that hand when she hugged him.
He kept his body very still, willing the tremors out of the muscles in his arms. He thought the beer had probably helped. “I care about you,” he said.
She kissed him on the cheek. “Me too.” She stepped to the door. “I’m not sure what I’m doing either. I don’t think it’s all hit me yet.”
On Monday he talked with his attorney and had Griff made his sole beneficiary. He drew up a living will, called about his pension plan and Social Security, got his meager 401(k) switched over to her. He thought about looking at nursing homes in Billings, then decided he needed to be farther away. The next day he drove to Denver. He found a place in Englewood he thought he could afford. It was clean and the staff looked like they’d seen so many people die it wasn’t a shock anymore. That’s what he wanted. Efficiency with no tears.
He got drunk in a downtown bar that night and had a seizure in the taxi riding back to his motel, then tipped the cabbie more than he needed to.
On the drive home he stopped in Sheridan for dinner and was just finishing when Helen and Larry came in. They turned away, speaking with their heads drawn close together, and then Larry nodded and she took his hand and they walked straight to the table.
“I’m so sorry about Jean,” she said.
Larry shook his hand. “We should have come to the funeral.”
“She drew a big crowd anyway.”
They all nodded. There was laughter from a table by the windows.
“Will you join us?” She was staring down at what was left of his meal.
“I’d better get going.”
“For a drink, then.”
There were voices at the front of the restaurant. They turned and saw a young man in a wheelchair talking with the hostess, explaining something. Both his legs were gone, his jeans folded back at the knees, his haircut still high and tight. The girl pushing the chair stared down at him and didn’t look up.
“I wish Dick Cheney was here,” Helen said. “I wish he had to see a boy like that every day for the rest of his life.”
Larry shook his head. “Know that Jean’s in our prayers,” he said.
“Thank you.”
She hugged him. “I need you to believe how truly sorry I am,” she said.
He nodded. He kept his eyes open, breathing through his mouth so he wouldn’t smell her hair. She stepped away,
“Have a good vacation,” he said.
“Buenas noches,” Larry said.
She stood between them with her hands laced at her waist, her jaw clenched, and they both knew this was the stance she took in public when she thought she might cry.
Thirty-two
IN THE EVENINGS, after eating his dinner at a café around the corner from the office, he’d drive out to the house and give her garden a couple of hours. Hoe the weeds, harvest whatever was ripe, turn the sprinklers on for a good soak. The first night after her death he’d carried a box of tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and bell peppers over to the next-door neighbor’s, but they’d looked at him with such pity that he now brought the produce into the office, encouraging Starla and his deputies to pick through it. He learned there was far too much zucchini in the world and that he slept better on the cot in the cell. One night Pearl brought in a plate of cookies.
He thought he might buy a van and drive to Arizona. Have a look at the Grand Canyon, loop down into Mexico and poke around. But what if his condition worsened and he couldn’t make it back? That’s how it had gone with his grandfather. He’d been able to sit up at the table and mash his food around enough to swallow, then two weeks later was in a wheelchair, wearing a neck brace to keep his head level and sucking his meals up through a straw. Anyway, he couldn’t imagine choking to death in a foreign country and didn’t want some stranger he couldn’t understand shoving a catheter in his dick.
He drove past the house before turning back south and out of town. The front door was propped open, Einar’s truck parked in the driveway with boxes in the back. Griff passed in front of the living-room window.
The traffic was light. Ranch families, tourists, a tractor idling along the shoulder, a carload of teenagers coming into town going ninety. He could see the expression of alarm on the driver’s face and watched in the rearview mirror as the kid stood on the brakes, locking them, damn near rolling it. He imagined their panic, their laughter, too young to honestly believe they’d been seconds away from dying, now pitching beer bottles two and three at a time into the borrow ditch, arguing who among them could walk the straightest line, contemplating how they’d get to school or get laid with no driver’s license, what story they’d fabricate for their parents.
His dad had taught school. He’d also taught him how to roll the gauze pads and wedge them around the outside of his grandfather’s bottom teeth, after plucking out the soaked rolls, the old man silently drooling. He remembered the apology in his eyes, unable by then to voice his thanks. Finally, the gauze wasn’t enough and they had to knot a bath towel around his neck.
His dad had done the heavy lifting. In and out of bed and the wheelchair, on and off the shitter. He’d rigged a canvas sling from the bathroom ceiling, like a suspended lawn chair, to get his father in under the shower. He’d strip down and get in with him, soaping, rinsing carefully. And then it was just sponge baths on the bed, the old man’s legs swollen red, purple and blue.
He turned off on Cabin Creek, stretching his mouth open wide, working his chin back and forth to relax the muscles in his jaw. He’d had another seizure last night, waking with it, biting at his tongue. He could still taste the blood in his mouth.
The tires rattled the plank bridge and he swung the cruiser around through the workyard, parking by the barn. There was only Brady’s truck and the rusted hulk of a ’52 DeSoto down on its rims, burdock and snakeweed growing out through the broken windows, the chrome hood ornament of Hernando’s head hack-sawed off.
He unholstered his revolver, releasing the cylinder and turning the barrel up, the cartridges fallin
g onto the palm of his hand. The doctor—his name was Scott—had said it was a pulmonary embolism that killed the old man. It happened at dawn. Probably during one of the nightmares he’d begun having. The lungs fill with blood, maybe you cough in your sleep, thrash once or twice, and you’re gone. Just that fast. Dr. Scott said if he had ALS it’s how he’d want to go, but he hadn’t been the one to clean up the mess. He thumbed the cartridges back into their chambers, all six of them, and snapped the cylinder home.
He didn’t ease the door shut when he got out of the car but slammed it hard, flushing a party of gray jays from the apple tree in front of the house. A single horse was circling the corral, neighing.
Inside the barn it was just as the girl had said it would be. No hoofstrikes or the odors of clover or timothy or animal dung, only the scratching of packrats in the loft, the light falling in dust-filled shafts from the row of windows under the eaves. Stereos, televisions, computers and firearms stacked carelessly against the walls as high as a man could lift. The stalls overflowing with cameras, VCRs, DVD players, antique furnishings, saddles, chain saws, power tools, wrench sets, table saws, joiners, a planer and drill press. He didn’t bother to part the sheets of milky plastic hanging from the rafters above the last stall. He knew what he’d find in there, his eyes already watering from the bite of ammonia, the mix of cooked chemicals.
“That you, old buddy?”
He turned to the granary door. He could feel the weak sunlight on his shoulders, on the back of his neck. It felt like a caress. “Right here,” he called.
There was Brady’s distinct laughter behind the door. “You want a beer?”
He slid his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Still the taste of blood. “I’m all right.” He gripped the revolver, holding it at his waist as he stepped through the door. He felt relaxed, fluid, just a boy coming to see his friend.
“Well, look at you,” Brady said. “Wyatt Earp–looking son of a bitch that you are.” He was sitting across the room in a cushioned chair, with a floor lamp by his side, books stacked around the base. A hooked rug in front of the chair. A card table crowded with rows of bound bills, tens and twenties and fifties. “I’ve been waiting all day for this.”
He bent over the arm of the chair and pulled a beer out of the cooler. The ice shifted. He offered the can and Crane shook his head. A pistol lay across Brady’s thighs. “Suit yourself.” A vein was pulsing in his pale neck, sweat dripping from his nose. “This is it? Just you?” He sipped the beer, wiped his mouth. “I was hoping for a SWAT team.”
On the walls were framed photographs of their families mounted and moving cows. He and Brady at a branding, in a snowdrift with their schoolbooks.
“Remember when we tried to drop a new engine in that old DeSoto?” Brady asked.
“Greased lightning.”
“That was us. Good times.”
Crane nodded, and Brady was on his feet with the pistol snatched up off his lap, the muzzle blast knocking Crane back a step. He stood blinking, his hearing mostly gone, his head filled with a high-pitched shrieking. He turned and saw the hole where the bullet had struck the wall, and when he turned back he could see the spiral of rifling in the bore, the barrel level with his face. “You have the right to remain silent,” he said.
Brady swung the pistol just inches to the side and it bucked again in his hand, the concussion again like a blow. He could smell the burning gunpowder and thought blood might be running from his ears, his skull and shoulders now vibrating.
“Anything you say can and will—”
Brady fired once more, just over the top of Crane’s head, his hand trembling. “Can’t you just fucking do this?” He was pleading. “Pretend I’m on fire.” His voice cracked. “Pretend I’m screaming so loud you can feel it in your teeth.”
Crane slapped him in the temple with his service revolver and Brady’s head snapped to the side but he didn’t go down. He just smiled like that’s what he’d needed all along, the blood sheeting the side of his head, as smooth and bright as new paint.
Crane leaned forward, lifting the pistol from Brady’s hand, and cuffed him. He didn’t struggle being led from the barn and folded into the backseat of the cruiser. He just bled.
Thirty-three
GRIFF CAME OUT in stocking feet, cotton pajama bottoms and a T-shirt a size too large, found where she’d left her boots on the porch, and sat on the top step to pull them on, watching the moon rise. When it cleared the horizon she started across the workyard staring into the sky, understanding she wouldn’t see the stars this clear and sharp for some time. Her arms prickled and she drew them back through the armholes, hugging herself inside the shirt.
When she ducked between the corral rails Royal nickered softly, his voice deeper than the others, a dozen of them milling around or standing in their sleep. She could just distinguish where he stood by the water trough, the night settled darker on his body, and when she got closer the outline of his head came clear in the moonlight, his ears pricked. The gate stood open. They’d come in from the pastureland to drink, perhaps finding some comfort in the shadows of the barn. A horse snorted, the stamp of a hoof reverberating in the ground. Another coughed.
She circled his neck with her arms, water dripping from his muzzle back into the trough, rippling the moon’s reflection. He nickered again, and this time it tickled her cheek.
He followed her to the barn. They all came, thinking of grain, but she latched the door behind her and stepped out through the tackshed holding a bridle against her side. They edged away, cautious as deer, and she wondered if it was the leather they smelled or if something had changed in her posture, revealing she wasn’t just another animal sharing the night but a woman wanting something from them. Only Royal did not care. He stepped to her and lowered his head.
She looped the reins around his neck, offering the bit and slipping the headstall over his ears. She buckled the throatlatch, turning to grip a handful of the dark mane at his withers, and swung onto his back. He stood straighter, the night changed for both of them.
The others moved away, coyly at first, then out through the gate at a run with her and Royal among them, the rhythm of their hooves striking the earth in a tremendous, continuous roar, the bunch of them moving at once together and apart, much as clouds shift. They swept down and across the creek, the surface breaking up in thin sheets that fell back into her chest and face, making her gasp. Once through the cottonwood and into the pasture, they separated and slowed, only she and Royal maintaining the pace.
He crossed the irrigation ditch that bordered the sage in a single jump and worked upward along the fall line, warming between her legs. She lay against his neck, a breast on either side of his neck, his body straining beneath her, lunging, and at the crest of the ridge she reined him in. They turned, looking back at the moonstruck valley below them, its long shadows falling westward. There was no wind, only the sound of their breathing. They seemed to be floating, as we float in our dreams.
She stood in the hallway outside his room, listening to the ticking of the old windup clock he preferred. “Are you asleep?” she whispered.
“I thought I was.” There was the rustling of bed linen. “I’m not sure I can always tell the difference anymore.”
She skirted the foot of the bed and stretched out on top of the covers beside him, the ticking even louder now.
“You used to come in here all the time when you were little. I forgot how much I liked it.”
She found his hand. “Me too.” His grip had gotten stronger.
“You smell horsey.”
“I was saying my good-byes,” she said. “I decided to go to Chicago. For the clay residency.”
“I was hoping you would. I would’ve been disappointed if you didn’t.”
The wind gusted and a series of pinecones fell against the roof, rolling into the gutter.
“They’ve got every kind of kiln you can think of,” she said, “and a gallery, and Marin said Paul can almost w
alk to school and I can take the ‘L’ down to Oak Park.”
Another gust of wind and more pinecones on the roof.
“I never said so, but I didn’t think Africa or Billings, neither one, would work for him.” He cleared his throat and pushed up higher against his pillows. “We’re going to manage here just fine. I don’t want you to worry.”
“I’m going to.”
“Then try to limit yourself,” he said. “Maybe just an hour in the mornings.”
She turned onto her side. “You don’t think Marin bribed them, do you? To accept me for the whole year?”
“She just sent the pictures she took.”
“You’re sure?”
“Marin wouldn’t do something like that.” And then, as though it had just occurred to him: “You aren’t taking them along, are you?”
“No. I made them for you.”
“I’ve gotten fond of that little snake-faced girl,” he said. “The others too.”
She slipped up against him, her head on his shoulder. “I’ll miss you.”
“I know you will.” He stroked her hair. “Why wouldn’t you?”
Thirty-four
HE HAD A BREAKFAST of cereal and skim milk. A breeze was coming through the window, and he sat listening to the notepaper snapping against the cabinet door. She always taped it up to the left of the sink, a printed-out reminder that she loved him, every day since they’d come back from the hospital. He thought he’d have a look at it later.
When he returned the milk carton to the refrigerator, he slid the meals she’d stacked up in casserole dishes to the side. Two plain, saltless lunches and dinners. Nothing fried. No sauces. He’d gotten used to them, but she was gone for the day and he’d made other arrangements.
She believed in reincarnation, and they’d agreed to come back as brother and sister again. He told her that if he got to pick, he sure wanted another run at it.
He drank two cups of coffee from the thermos she’d left on the counter, rinsed the dishes and positioned himself in the center of the kitchen. He swung his arms around him, cocking his hips left and right, and everything seemed to be working better than it had for some time. He felt an uncommon clarity and didn’t hurt anywhere, so decided not to take his pills. He wanted to see what would happen.