“You listen to me, Pete. You’re lucky I don’t bill the county for all the coffee and food you and your men have been drinking and eating. You’re a lot more solvent than I am, that’s for sure. If you want a different kind of coffee, you can go get it yourself.”
The sheriff holds up his hands in a surrender pose.
“All right, all right. Jesus.”
“And don’t you cuss around me.”
She turns and walks toward the door in short, choppy steps, and I notice that she walks exactly the same way that Donna does when she’s mad. I like this.
In the parking lot, I put a hand on her shoulder to slow her down. With my achy ribs and recovering lung, I cannot keep up.
“You really told him,” I say.
“That paternal son of a…doo-doo head!”
The last syllable emerges from Sheila Renfro in a squeak, and I begin to laugh but throw my hand over my mouth. I don’t want to join Sheriff Pete on Sheila Renfro’s bad side.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go for a walk.”
We take much the same route we followed the day before, past the lumberyard and across the brown courthouse lawn, which is mottled with bits of snow that hasn’t melted in the past couple of days.
“How is your endurance?” Sheila Renfro asks.
“Good.”
“Want to go farther?”
“Yes.”
We leave the business district and head into the residential streets, and I see Cheyenne Wells as I’ve never seen it before, not even when I was here as a little boy in 1978. Most of the houses sit on generous lots, as if the original builders figured that, yes, they were part of a town but there was no reason to be too close to one’s neighbors. That’s an ethic I can appreciate.
The houses are not much different from the ones on my street. Most of them are wooden, built in a bungalow style. Yards are a patchwork of well-tended lawns and weed farms. The overwhelming characteristic of Cheyenne Wells, in my memories and in my vision now, is the sky. Nothing intrudes on it. This terrain is flat in all directions.
Sheila Renfro points at a small, tidy, brown stucco house on Fourth Street.
“My parents lived there while the motel was being built,” she says.
“It’s nice.”
“Yeah. I like to walk past it and think of what their life must have been like at that time, before I came along. They never talked much about those days, so it’s left to my imagination.”
Up ahead, on the corner, she points out Cheyenne Wells High School, her alma mater. She says she doesn’t have much school spirit, and I understand completely. I went to Billings West High School, and aside from Mr. Withers, who was my wood shop teacher there before he became my boss at the newspaper years later, I didn’t have any friends.
“We had a fifteen-year reunion a couple of years ago. Some of the people who moved away came back and stayed in my motel and had parties. It took me a week to clean it all up,” she says.
“People can be really rude,” I say.
“Amen to that. Well, come on, Edward. Let’s head back.”
She offers her hand for me to hold.
“Just as friends,” she says.
I take her hand in mine and off we go, the way we came.
— • —
I’m watching daytime TV—some kind of reality-style, in-the-courtroom show—when the in-room telephone rings, startling me.
I pick it up, and before I can say hello, Sheila Renfro’s voice is in my ear, urgent.
“You’d better come up here,” she says.
I turn off the TV and push myself off the bed with little pain, just a twinge (I love the word “twinge”).
As I step into the hallway, I can see that someone is at the front desk, but she—the shape looks like a she—is leaning over the ledge and I cannot see her face.
Then I hear the voice and I know.
“Mother?”
My mother faces me. Her appearance, as always, is immaculate. She is clearly not happy to be here. This signal is unmistakable in her face and in her voice when she speaks.
“Get your things. I’m taking you home.”
“But—”
“Your things, Edward. I have your car. We’re going back to Billings today, you and me.”
“But—”
“Now.”
Hers is the voice of finality. I’ve heard it before. It’s the voice she used to tell Jay L. Lamb that he was never to contact me again without her approval.
I walk back down the hall toward room number four. Behind me, Sheila Renfro’s voice is saying, “I was going to take him to Denver tomorrow. You didn’t—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” my mother replies.
I open the door to my room and get inside so I don’t have to listen to anything else.
— • —
I need two trips to get everything to the car. I still have six water bottles left from the case I started with.
“Do you want these?” I ask Sheila Renfro.
“I guess.”
She walks with me to the car. My mother is standing in the door frame, one foot on the floorboard, the other on the asphalt.
“I guess I’m leaving now,” I tell Sheila Renfro.
“I guess.”
“I’m sorry we got only part of today together.”
Sheila Renfro is tearing up. I hate that.
“Me, too,” she says.
“Edward…” my mother implores.
Sheila Renfro reaches around my neck and pulls herself in tight to me. My mother begins to say something, and I hold out my left hand, and she stops.
Sheila Renfro lets me go. I ease into the passenger seat of my new Cadillac, and my mother also gets in. I look out the window at Sheila, her eyes all red-rimmed and translucent (I love the word “translucent,” but I hate it right now), and I put my hand against the glass.
My mother backs out of the parking space and turns toward the highway. I watch in my side-view mirror, and Sheila Renfro follows us for a few steps until we’re on the highway and my mother steps on the gas.
In 6.8 seconds, I can’t see Sheila Renfro anymore.
— • —
We’re nearly to Limon before my mother says anything. For miles, we have been glancing at each other, sometimes opening our mouths, but no words have come. When the silence ends, it’s as if someone has pumped oxygen back into the car.
“I was worried about you,” she says.
“I was all right.”
“It’s just… you know, the whole trip seemed like it was turning into a disaster. You’ve been doing so well. I didn’t want you to land in any trouble.”
I am flummoxed by my mother’s assessment of how I’m doing. It’s been a shitburger of a year. I haven’t been doing well for weeks. For months. But I was doing fine with Sheila Renfro.
“I wasn’t in any trouble.”
“That woman, she’s trouble.”
“No, Mother, she’s not.”
She says nothing to this, and I’m not going to explain it. I remember what Dr. Buckley said about how people make up their mind about things by processing information through their biases and experiences. I will not idly accept my mother’s pronouncements about Sheila Renfro, but neither can I force her to see things my way.
“You were going home anyway,” she says.
“Yes.”
“So it doesn’t matter if it’s a day early.”
“If it makes you feel better to think so.”
My mother’s face scrunches up.
“You look like you’ve lost weight.”
“I was in a bad car wreck, Mother.”
She holds tight to the steering wheel up top with both hands.
“I’m trying to talk to you, Son.”
“I know,” I say. “I don’t feel like talking.”
I plug my bitchin’ iPhone into the adaptor and turn the receiver on. I shuffle the songs. Michael Stipe begins to sing about how he found a wa
y to make someone smile.
I turn my body to the right. My ribs scream. I face the window. I don’t want my mother to see me like this.
— • —
We eat dinner at Hathaway’s restaurant in the Little America Hotel near Cheyenne, Wyoming. I’ve slept most of the way—a fitful, in-and-out sleep during which I lurch awake and take in the passing landscape before drifting off again. Now I pick at my roasted chicken and I try to bring myself out of my stupor.
“You’re not mad at me, are you?” my mother asks.
I learned from Dr. Buckley that this is a passive-aggressive question. My mother knows that I should be and am angry with her. She knows she overstepped her boundaries. Now she’s asking me to tell her it was OK.
“You shouldn’t have done what you did,” I say.
“You needed my help.”
Now my mother is bargaining.
“No, I didn’t. I had the situation under control.”
“I still say it doesn’t really matter because you were going home anyway and now we get to spend some time together.”
My mother is still bargaining.
I don’t say anything.
“What’s wrong? It seems like there’s something you’re not telling me,” she says.
I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands.
“I don’t have a job anymore. My best friends are gone. I have type two diabetes—”
“You have diabetes?”
“Yes, I told you that.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I didn’t?”
“No. When did you find out?”
“Dr. Rex Helton told me on December eighth.”
“What are you doing about it?”
“I’m eating roasted chicken and vegetables,” I say, passing my hand over my plate.
“How can I know what’s going on in your life if you don’t tell me, Edward?”
“How can you pretend to know if you don’t ask?”
This is probably the most acidic (I love the word “acidic”) thing I have ever said to my mother, and instantly I wish I hadn’t.
Her mouth puckers up like a chicken’s asshole.
“Let’s just eat,” she says.
— • —
My mother asks me to drive for a while. She says it’s been a long day, what with the early flight from Dallas/Fort Worth, the drive down to Cheyenne Wells from Denver, and now the drive back across Colorado to Wyoming, the entirety of which still stands between us and Billings. She says all of this as if she had no choice in the matter, which tells me that my mother still thinks she did the right thing. This flummoxes me. It’s not like her to be so obtuse (I love the word “obtuse”).
The full night is upon us now, and only Michael Stipe’s voice is fighting against the silence as he sings about the imitation of life. I’ve turned the volume down to where only someone who knows the songs as well as I do can make out the words.
“Losing your job really threw you for a loop, didn’t it?” my mother says.
“Yes.”
“I’m sure it was nothing personal. Mr. Withers always liked you.”
“It’s not the insult. It’s the timing.”
“Edward,” she says, “you are so fortunate. You don’t have to work if you don’t want to.”
I laugh. It’s not a ha-ha-funny laugh. It’s bitter and hard.
“Jay L. Lamb said the same thing,” I say.
My mother sits up.
“I’m going to call Jay in the morning. I bet he can help you find a job. Would that be all right?”
I consider this. When it comes to talking to Jay L. Lamb, I’m always in favor of someone else doing it. And I do need a job. Somehow, I have to start rebuilding a life in Billings, Montana, which seems odd to say since it’s the only life I’ve ever known. I might as well start the rebuilding project with a new job.
It can only get better from there.
— • —
I stop for gas in Casper, Wyoming, and fill the tank with 15.464 gallons of unleaded at $3.0399 per gallon, for a total of $47.01. My mother asks me if I’m getting weary. It’s 8:31 p.m. now, and I probably could use a break from driving.
As we get back on the road my mother says, “I want to show you something.”
Instead of heading back to the interstate, she drives in the other direction, through Casper, and soon I am unsure where we are. We pass a building emblazoned with TOWN OF MILLS, and we ride on from there. About a mile up the road, my mother turns left into a patch of 1950s-era ranch-style homes.
“Where are we?” I say.
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
She takes a left turn (bad), then a right turn (good), then another left (bad). She rolls the Cadillac up to a small box of a home.
“Your father and I used to live in that house,” she says.
I have never heard about this.
“When?”
“Right after we got out of school. He went to work for the oil company, and they put us here in Casper. God, I hated it. I’d grown up in Texas—your father had, too, of course, but at least he had something to do here. The wind blew all the time. We’d get buried in drifts of snow in winter, way worse than anything we ever saw in Billings. Anyway, that was our first house together.”
I stare at the structure. It looks too small, even for just two people. However, I have to concede that whoever lives here now takes pride in it. The yard is neat and tended. The chain link fence doesn’t sag. It’s small, but it’s nice.
“Was it red like this?” I ask.
“No, it was white. The red looks better. It also had a garage, but it looks like they’ve turned that into a room. Good idea. It was a tiny, tiny place. Your father and I had to turn our backs to the wall to pass each other in the hallway.”
“How long were you here?”
“Fourteen months. I counted every day.” My mother laughs. “Getting to go to Billings was like paradise. We built a good life there, too. You came along.”
“It’s weird to think of any place other than Billings being home to you and Father.”
My mother puts the car back in drive and leaves her past behind. I’m still struck by the fact that there’s something I could learn about my parents this late in my life.
“I’ll tell you something, Edward. It’s becoming weird for me to think of Billings as home. I’m a little nervous about seeing it again.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m getting ingrained in Texas. It’s like I rediscovered where home is. Now that your father has been gone awhile, there’s not so much for me to do in Billings anymore.”
TECHNICALLY WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2011
We make it to Billings at 12:07 a.m. My mother drives through the quiet dark to her downtown condo and then turns the car over to me. She says she will call Jay L. Lamb first thing in the morning and let me know what he says. She gives me a kiss on the cheek and says good-bye. Four minutes and twenty-eight seconds later, I come home to 639 Clark Avenue.
The house is as I left it eleven days ago. And yet, it feels foreign to me. That doesn’t make sense, but then a lot of what I’m feeling lately doesn’t seem logical. I’m going to have to hang on until things sort out.
I’ll have to go to the post office later today and retrieve my mail. I’ll call the Billings Herald-Gleaner, too, and get my paper going again. I’ve been thinking about it during the entire drive from Cheyenne Wells, and figuring out how my life works here—what Scott Shamwell calls “sorting out the shithouse”—is going to take discipline. Throughout this shitburger of a year, I’ve been letting routine get away from me. Routine, I’ve decided, is my way back to happiness, if happiness is anything I can aspire to. At this point, I’d take normalcy, whatever that is.
My ribs ache. The constant motion and the getting out of and into the car have sapped me physically.
I need to make a list of things to do when I wake up, so I can begin to round my life back into
shape. A list represents discipline, and discipline is what I need.
EDWARD’S TO-DO LIST
1. Go to the post office and get my mail, and reinstate delivery.
2. Call the Billings Herald-Gleaner and restart home delivery of the paper.
3. Go to the grocery store. Think lean meats, whole grains, and fruits and vegetables.
4. Go to Rimrock Mall and get something for Mother for Christmas.
5. Before going to Rimrock Mall, see if a good item can be found online and delivered before Christmas. Rimrock Mall four days before Christmas? What was I thinking?
6. Arrange to see Dr. Rex Helton and Dr. Bryan Thomsen. A good life means good health. I need to get on top of this.
7. Stop writing this list.
8. Stop now.
9. Dammit.
10. Go to sleep.
11. Shit.
12. STOP IT!
I break another pen in half to keep from writing another item. It’s 12:49 a.m. I’m tired.
Since we left Casper, I’ve been thinking about my mother and my father and their life together—the way it was before I came along and the way it was after. I was surprised to learn that they had lived in Wyoming when they first got married, and after that, I was happy to have heard the story. My mother doesn’t talk much about my father anymore, and I struggle with that, because I think about him more than I ever have and would like to talk with her about him. I don’t measure such things as the amount of time spent thinking about my father, of course, and that’s not really my point. My point is that my father is often on my mind.
When we drove into Montana, I reminded my mother about my father’s crashing into a deer, and she scoffed.
“That was up by Little Bighorn,” she said. “He was drunk, you know.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, he was drunk. The whole thing scared me to death. That deer, he bounced off the front of the car and into the windshield, and I swear, I thought he was going to come through and land in the backseat. Your father there, prattling on, not paying attention. We’re lucky we weren’t killed. That’s when I told him, ‘Ted, never again. I’m never riding with you again when you’ve been drinking.’”
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