“She needs her sleep,” his father said. “We were up late.” He glanced at Kenny.
Kenny stood at the refrigerator, holding the door wide open.
“Don’t worry,” his dad said. “I’m the one in the doghouse, not you.”
“Why are you in the doghouse?”
His dad clinked his coffee cup as he set it in the sink and suddenly looked tired. He shrugged his shoulders and laughed. The laugh was dry and almost silent. Kenny let the refrigerator door swing closed.
“Let’s get on the road. We can stop someplace to eat,” his dad said. “I’ll go out and load the horses, get the truck warmed up. You round up your gear.”
Kenny waited while his dad hoisted his sleeping bag and elbowed his way out the door. Then he ran up the stairs two at a time. Halfway up, he stopped, worried the thumping of his feet might wake his mother. He dug through his bottom drawer and found two extra pairs of socks, rolled them in his sleeping bag, and carried the bedroll downstairs. Out the kitchen window, he watched his father coaxing the second horse into the truck. The horse balked and shied away, but his dad kept a grip on the halter, turning the horse in a tight circle before he sent him scrambling up the ramp. He lowered the stock rack gate and latched it. Kenny wanted to go one more time to his mother’s door, to see if she was awake. But he didn’t have time. All he could do was scribble “Be back late tomorrow” on an envelope and leave it propped up on the sugar bowl. He grabbed his sleeping bag and ran out to the truck. He was barely six feet from the door when it slammed so hard he heard the glass panels rattle in their frames.
His father drove north out of town, one hand gripping the wheel and the elbow of his left arm leaning out the open window. Main Street was wide and empty. The only other cars they saw were parked in front of the hotel coffee shop, where the plate glass window, silvered with steam, looked like a pocked antique mirror. His dad let the truck creep along until they passed the courthouse before he started to speed up. On the open highway, wind rushed through the cab and slapped Kenny’s hair around his face. He brushed it back with his hand, but a strand cut across one eye, as sharp as a blade of swamp grass. Kenny blinked back tears, but he didn’t roll his window up. He was relieved the wind and the rattle of the truck made so much noise he didn’t have to worry about making conversation.
After a few miles, his father cleared his throat and raised his voice.
“So tell me how you’re getting along.”
“Okay, I guess.”
“No, tell me. How’s the new school?”
“It’s all right.”
His father rolled his window up, and Kenny felt he had to roll his up as well.
“What’s your favorite subject?”
“Lunch.”
It was an old joke, but his father gave him a quick smile anyway.
“Give me some facts,” he said. “Is it a good school?”
“Not very,” Kenny said and immediately wished he hadn’t. His dad would blame the school on his mother. The school was worn down and dirty; all the books were old and out-of-date. “It’s okay,” he said. “Just different from the last one.”
“How so?”
“It’s small.”
“Well, that’s good,” his father said. “Any girls in it?”
“No.” Kenny lied deadpan, and his father laughed out loud.
“No girls?”
“Haven’t seen any.”
“I bet you haven’t,” his father said, then added, “but you will.”
Kenny grinned and looked out the window at the pale blur of sagebrush going by. Thousands of tiny purple asters, the last wildflowers, had shriveled in the short, dry grass beside the road.
“Well,” his father said, “don’t worry about it. Pretty soon, the girls are going to see you. But that doesn’t answer my question. How are you and your mother doing? Tell me the truth.”
Kenny glanced over at his father. White squint lines radiated from the outside corners of his eyes. His face was so burned by the sun and wind that it looked smudged and dirty. Kenny remembered that his father had been traveling and hunting by himself for a week now. It made Kenny feel left out. He wondered why his dad hadn’t come to get him sooner.
Kenny shrugged. “We’re fine,” he said. He stared through the murky windshield, wishing he’d thought to hose it off while he was waiting for his dad to get up. He knew his dad was frowning—he felt it without having to look over at him. “Tell me about the time you took Mom up in the trainer plane.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“We’re fine,” Kenny said.
For a minute, Kenny thought he’d made his father mad. But his father laughed, low in his throat, as if he were laughing by himself, and started to tell the story about the two-seater. Kenny had heard it so many times he knew it almost word for word. But he wanted to hear it again. If he could get his father telling airplane stories, he wouldn’t have to answer questions.
Kenny twisted around on the seat so he could watch his father’s face and listened to the story. His dad had endless stories about landing airplanes in Nebraska—on dirt roads, and fields, and frozen ponds—when he was young. Three times he had walked away from planes that crashed. He had two scars Kenny knew about. In the winter when his face was clean and shaved, a thin white scar pulled at the corner of his mouth and zigzagged over the edge of his chin, like a crack in an eggshell. If you glimpsed it quickly from the side, you got the impression his dad was drooling, and when he was mad, the scar made him look a little sad, and not so frightening. It was ugly, the way the scar pulled down on the edge of his lip, but it only made Kenny want to stare at his face, as if he could never see it for long enough. The other scar made a raised, thick rope from his hip to his knee where he used to have a steel rod implanted. He walked with a limp when he was tired, but he wouldn’t admit it. Kenny’s mother said he’d lied about his leg for so long to pass his air force physicals that he’d convinced himself there was nothing wrong with him.
“You were just a baby,” his dad was saying. “I was still stationed in Nevada, way out in the boondocks. And I talked your mother into going up with me. The first, and the last, time. I don’t remember where you were. We must have left you with a sitter.”
His parents had taken off over the desert in an old trainer, his dad in the front and his mother in the seat behind, and circled around the airport, chatting back and forth to each other by radio. So when his dad came in for the landing, everything was fine, except he forgot to switch off the radio, and the tower could hear what they said. As the wheels touched down, his mother shouted, “Oh! That was a good one, Daddy!” For months after that, every time his dad made a landing, the tower would come in saying, “That was a good one, Daddy!”
His dad finished the story, laughing. Kenny started to ask him about another time, when his squadron stole a jeep and hid it in the bomb bay. But by then, the road had started a steep climb, and his dad pulled off at the Food Ranch. They filled both gas tanks and went inside for groceries. Kenny wandered around the store while his father waited to pay. There wasn’t much to look at on the dusty shelves. He walked over to the gun counter to look at fishing lures and flies. The lures hung on a rack, wrapped in plastic envelopes so dim and grimy he could hardly tell what kind they were. He looked in the flat case of flies on the counter, but the separate squares were nearly empty. In one he saw a real fly, a housefly, dead and curled up on its back. He almost went to get his dad to ask him, “How much you think they want for that one?” He would have done it if his mom had been along, but his dad was different. Instead, he looked at the rifles in the locked gun case. He didn’t know much about guns. His father had never taken him hunting for big game before. They’d gone fishing, and one fall he went along with his dad and some men from his squadron to shoot ducks. His father was stationed in Florida now. He said he’d gone out deep-sea fishing on a charter boat.
When they were back in the truck, his father rolled his window do
wn again, and Kenny put his hand up to keep his hair out of his eyes.
“Too much wind?” his father asked, and rolled his window halfway up. Then he pulled an orange hunting cap from the grocery sack and presented it to him. “Here,” he said, “put that on. But if you’re ever hunting where it’s crowded, leave it home. It’ll only make you a better target.”
“It won’t be crowded where we’re going?”
“Not a chance.”
“Where is it, again?”
“The Big Hole, in Montana.”
“Why are we going so far?”
Kenny pushed his hair back and fitted the hat down snug over his forehead, tugging on the bill. He didn’t honestly care how far they went. He was fascinated by the names “The Big Hole” and “Montana.” He pictured a narrow valley with high white mountains all around. For some reason, it made him see tall, wavy grass, toasted gold and brown like shredded wheat. But his father had an answer.
“A major in my squadron has a brother-in-law owns a hunting camp up there. Must have been three years ago we got invited. I didn’t get a thing,” he said, “unless you count a hangover and a rotten disposition.”
The truck began to climb up the pass, where snow had pooled and frozen under the trees. Tall spruce trees appeared beside the road, black against the snow, and the air smelled different. Kenny rolled his window down and stuck his head out. He could feel the cool air seep out from under the trees. It felt like standing in front of the open refrigerator in the summer, looking at what there was to eat. Kenny ducked his head back in the cab, and the truck ground into second gear, then finally into first, and crawled up the winding road, the engine scrambling like a rusty, mechanical crab. They passed a sign that said “Continental Divide,” and then they were sailing down the other side of the pass, on a two-lane road cutting straight across a wide expanse of shale and sagebrush. Kenny turned and saw his father holding back a grin, as if he was keeping back a secret.
“You want to drive?” he said.
“Sure,” Kenny said, but his father gave him a look and he changed it to “Yes, sir.”
They pulled over, got out, and walked around the truck to switch sides. The high, arid plains seemed suddenly flat and very quiet. He took hold of the wheel to swing himself up on the truck seat and stretched his foot down toward the pedals. But he couldn’t reach. Both of them had to throw all their weight to get the rusty seat to slide a little forward. Kenny grasped the gearshift and tried three times before he finally jammed it into first. Then he eased up slowly on the clutch. But the truck lurched off the shoulder, spraying sand and gravel off into the sagebrush.
Kenny glanced sideways, but all his father said was “Take it easy with the livestock.” Kenny slid the gearshift into second, and finally into third.
“One of these days, if I’m brave enough, I’ll teach you how to fly.”
His dad and uncle Jack had grown up flying airplanes. Their father had owned a garage and John Deere dealership, and the two of them covered the entire county delivering parts and repairing tractors right out in the field. Later on, they flew to different rodeos. Kenny had his uncle Jack’s old bareback rigging.
His uncle Jack was dead. He’d died a long time ago, before Kenny was born. But his dad still bragged about how they both had their pilot’s licenses before they got their licenses to drive. Kenny liked to hear the story, but he didn’t even have a driver’s license. And his dad had been promising for years to teach him how to fly.
“Now, take it easy,” his dad said. He flicked on the radio, leaned back on the dusty seat cover, and snapped open a beer can. “Just keep going straight,” he said, laughing, because there wasn’t any other way to go. After a while, Kenny looked over and saw he was asleep.
Kenny drove and listened to the radio. A wind came up. It buffeted the truck and threatened to jerk the wheel out of his hands. The volcanic plain stretched as far as he could see, a flat, dull-colored strip of land under a pale blue sky. Misty clouds stretched along the horizon, and dust devils twisted far off in the distance, like smoke from cooking fires. A tumbleweed skittered in front of the truck, bounced as high as a basketball, and caught in the barbed-wire fence along the road. He gripped the wheel hard to keep the truck from swerving. When the radio announcer spoke, Kenny was amazed to hear the broadcast came all the way from Calgary, in Canada. The station was playing corny old cowboy songs. He listened to “Timber Trail” and “Empty Saddles.” He laughed and tried to whistle a high harmony along with the yodeling in the song that came on next. But he couldn’t whistle very well. His mother could, but she wouldn’t teach him how. He started to think about Roddy Moyers, and he found himself clamping his fingers too tight on the steering wheel.
His pulse raced, and he thought about straddling the chute, waiting for a signal. How the fear coiled in his stomach and he fought to keep from squeezing his eyes shut. Somehow, the tense pull—half terror and half excitement—was mixed up now with Roddy Moyers. He had to find a way to get back to it. A new fear, like the fear of forgetting a test at school, crept up the back of his neck. Something might happen, and he would never ride again. He lifted his fingers off the wheel and fanned them out, hanging on with his thumbs. He slumped down, to get more comfortable in the seat, and tried to relax with the music. But after a few miles, his hands were tight on the wheel again and he was sitting up with air between his backbone and the truck seat. He had to relax all over again.
It was after dark before he found the road up to the hunting camp, and his dad had to drive the last few uphill miles on a logging road so rutted and washed out the truck jolted over boulders as if the wheels were square instead of round. Finally his dad squeezed the brake and they unloaded the horses. Kenny took hold of a halter with each hand and led them up on foot, following the rocking, red embers of the taillights.
He was disappointed to reach The Big Hole after dark. He lay in his sleeping bag surrounded by a blackness so thick his eyes felt closed, though they were open. Overhead, dense white stars shivered in a solid mass and made the night seem blacker. They had built a fire, but it cast no light.
“Dad?” he said into the darkness. “You awake?”
A grunt came back from across the campfire.
“What’s it look like in the daytime?”
“What?”
“The Big Hole.”
“Huge black hole in the ground. As far across as Boise.”
“Be serious.”
“Indians dug it.”
Kenny shook his head, smiling.
“Blackfeet.” His dad let out a laugh.
“Come on.” Kenny shook his head again, but the picture in his mind of Indians with dirty feet sneaking up to dig a hole made him laugh, too. “What’s it really look like?”
“Another bunch of mountains,” his dad said. “We’re not right in the hole.”
“Where’s the hole?”
“West of here.”
“What’s in it?”
“Big ranches . . . and mosquitoes. Worst mosquitoes you ever saw. Pack a man right off his tractor. Then go back for the tractor.”
Kenny laughed until his ribs hurt. It wasn’t the joke, it was his father telling it.
“Dad?”
“What?”
Kenny took a breath, not sure he could trust his voice. “You ever getting stationed back up here?”
His father didn’t answer. The mountain was very still, and the stars seemed to quiver and plunge down closer to his face.
“Shouldn’t count on it,” his dad said.
For no reason Kenny felt dragged down by sorrow. He swallowed hard. “Why not?” he said. For a minute he had the feeling nobody was out there in the dark. That he was alone on the mountain. Finally his father answered.
“I don’t have that much to say about it. I just go where Uncle Sam tells me.”
“But couldn’t you ask to come back?”
His father cleared his throat. “If you ever need anything. Anything at all.
You call me. You know where I am.”
“Go to hell,” Kenny said, low under his breath. He rolled over on his stomach.
His father gave the “if you ever need anything” speech every time he saw him. At first Kenny thought it meant he should call if he needed something, like new gym shoes. But when he got older he understood it meant good-bye. It was like saying “See you” or “Be sure to write.”
“Kenny?” There was a hardness in his father’s voice, as if he was starting in on a lecture.
“Yeah?”
“Can you hear me?”
“Uh-huh.” He squeezed his eyes shut.
“You awake?”
Kenny didn’t answer. He heard his father scuffle out of his bag and get up to toss a branch on the fire. He could hear it crackle and burn.
He tried to concentrate on the steep climbing they would do the next day. His dad had ended up with only one permit—to shoot a mountain goat—but goats were the hardest game to locate in high country.
When his father called his name again, he pretended he was sleeping.
7
Roddy Moyers sat up as if he were raising one sore rib at a time, opened his eyes, and squinted against the glare of white light in the cell. He held his hand up as a shade, surprised to see it wrapped in thick gauze and adhesive tape, the edges of the bandage rusty with dried blood. He flexed his fingers and winced. The jail cell was familiar—small, rectangular, the concrete walls glazed with so many layers of paint they glistened like yellowing cream. He swung his feet to the floor and stood. When his head cleared, he stepped over to the tin mirror screwed into the wall above the sink. A long scratch, beaded with crystalline blood, ran down his forehead and across one cheek. He reached up and touched a small flap of skin hanging loose near his chin. Down the hallway, he could hear the squawk and crackle of a two-way radio. He turned around slowly, opened the cell door, and walked out.
Following the sound of the radio, he passed two other cells, the windows barred with woven strips of steel. In each one, a sleeping body was rolled up in a blanket on the cot. He turned into the sheriff’s office, a cubicle of gray metal furniture, the air parched with the smell of dust and old paper. The deputy sat at the radio, his khaki uniform creased sharp along the sleeves and a heavy black holster shifted around to fit under the arm of his chair.
Love and Country Page 5