She drove slowly through town and up the gravel road past the dump. She tried to stay in the deep ruts, gunning the motor through the drifts, but she could hear snow scraping on the underside of the carriage. She prayed not to get stuck again.
At the house, she parked in the yard and stepped out into deep snow. Behind the car, she climbed out of the coveralls and folded them on top of the toolbox in the trunk and tried to lower the lid softly. It latched with a small click, but the sound carried sharp in the air. Her skirt had bunched up under the coveralls and clung around her waist in sharp folds. She tried to smooth it down, but the creases remained. She stuffed her arms into her coat and tried to button it. Her fingers were so cold they couldn’t find the holes. A light flicked on in the kitchen.
There was nothing else to do. She made herself numb, empty inside, and walked into the house.
Her father was sitting at the table, the bright overhead light gleaming off the Formica. He wore long underwear and his ranch coat, the arms patched with red canvas where he’d snagged it on barbed wire. He looked up, his eyes gray and watery, his jaw set hard.
She knew what she looked like, her skirt crumpled, her hair in her eyes.
“We went off the road,” she said.
“That’s a lie,” he said.
“I had to get the coveralls. From the trunk.”
“It’s three o’clock in the morning.”
“The road was blown in.”
She was telling the truth, but lying about why she was late. The lie burned like shiny coal, sharp and faceted, inside her stomach. And her father knew. He had a way of knowing. She could feel the charge of his anger in the room. But the lie made her strong.
“Call Harold,” she said.
“Come here,” her father said.
She didn’t move.
“Now,” he said. “Move.”
“No.”
He was around the table before she could flinch. His hand struck her face so hard her cheek burned as if he’d hit her with the flat bottom of an iron. Tears stood in her eyes, but she didn’t cry. Her hand came up, involuntary, to her cheek, but she stared back at her father.
They stood there, locked in some kind of tunnel, as if the room around them had disappeared. She could feel the cold wall behind her. Her father glared hatred at her, his eyes hard. Fear locked them together. She thought he could kill her.
“You’re a whore,” he said.
The word hit her like another slap, and the heat of shame shot up, burning in her throat, in her face.
She turned and ran, her heart knocking so hard that all she wanted was to escape it. She got out the door and flung it closed, but she could feel her father right behind her. She plowed out toward the barn, running hard, until the drifts caught at her knees and threw her down in the snow. She spun around and looked behind her. There was no one there.
22
Kenny sat up. A dull pain thudded low in the back of his skull, and the bones in his neck seemed to grate against each other. He felt for the lump on his head where he’d banged into the ceiling. The air in the room was almost crystalline, and his breath blew out in a mist. He stood up slowly, so cold he felt invisible, and walked over to switch off the radio. In the kitchen, he turned the oven dial, listened for the hiss of gas, and levered the door open. He lifted his coat off the hook. It was so stiff with cold it held the shape of a hanged man until he shook it out and pulled it on.
He looked at the clock. It was Christmas morning. He was hungry. His stomach felt concave with pain. He ate a slice of pumpkin pie, the filling half frozen and gritty. But the pain didn’t go away. It stretched taut and hard inside him.
He didn’t light the fire in the woodstove or open the curtains. He sat for a while on the couch, trying to find some warm place inside his body. Quiet seemed to pulse in the room.
The lights on the tree blinked on and off, each bulb casting a thin light. There was only a bunched-up white bedsheet under the tree. But there must presents somewhere, he thought. He stood and walked through the kitchen into his mother’s room.
The bed was made with a faded pink spread, and the perfume bottles on the dresser stood in a circle on a painted tin tray. It looked too clean, like a motel room. He opened the closet door. Inside, the clothes hung neatly on the rod, and a sweet smell, almost like warmth, the smell of his mother’s wool coat, came from them. The hook on the inside of the door was draped with too many dresses and scarves. A thin white belt had dropped on the floor and uncurled.
He reached up on the shelf and felt under the folded sweaters for something like a box. But he found nothing. He thought he might go get a chair. But there were other places to look first.
He knelt down and flipped the hanging spread up over the bed. Deep in the shadows, he saw something. He had to lie down flat on his stomach, his shoulder caught by the frame, and reach with his whole arm. His fingers touched the square corner of a box. It seemed weighted, like a box of books, and at first he only pushed it farther away. He managed to turn it slightly and get a grip on the edge. He pulled slowly with the bent tips of his fingers, sat back on his knees, and slid the heavy box out.
The box was brown cardboard, sealed with wide paper tape. It was addressed to him in blue ink, and the return address said Swanson. At first, he couldn’t understand. It seemed so mysterious, as if he’d sent a package to himself. Then he thought no, it was a package from his father. It scared him, then. He lifted the box up onto the bed and went to the kitchen for a knife.
He used a serrated steak knife, sawing along the seam of tape. A sick feeling made him want to stop, slide the box back under the bed, but he cut through the tape and spread open the cardboard flaps.
A sheet of stationery floated on top of crumpled newspapers. He picked it up.
“Kenny,” it said. “These are some things of your dad’s I thought you might want.” It was signed “Merry Christmas from Louise.” Her writing was small, the letters curved tight into each other. It made her seem so far away. A person with a whole life, separate, and safer than his.
Under the newspaper, he found a pair of Tony Lama boots, so old the toes had accordioned back in deep creases. They were made of something bumpy, like ostrich skin or alligator, something expensive, but they were mildewed dusty green on one side. Kenny scraped at the dust with his fingernail and the green came off. He had no memory of his dad ever wearing these boots. He didn’t think they even belonged to him.
In the bottom of the box he found a fly rod, broken down and packed into a long, brown case. And there was a gun. Not his dad’s new rifle, but the old one, the shotgun. Kenny wondered what had happened to the Winchester. He hadn’t seen it at Louise’s house. The trophy of the goat wasn’t there either. And his dad had never sent him the fleece. It was as if these things, the hunting trip, had never existed. As if Kenny had dreamed them, and then woke up.
He picked up the big box. It was light now, almost weightless, but he dumped the newspaper out on the bed, just in case there was something he had missed.
In the pile of paper, wrapped in layers of white handkerchiefs, he found a silver-and-gold rodeo buckle. It said, “Best All Around Cowboy, Fargo, North Dakota,” and a date. The date was before he’d been born, in a time he knew only from photographs.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, slipped the rod case apart, and drew out the pieces, wrapped in an old, soft curtain. The pieces rolled under the cloth, narrow and jointed. Gently, he lifted them out and fitted them together. The rod was made of bamboo, with tiny green varnished bands painted at the joints. It gleamed, a rich golden color that had always made him think of pheasants. It was heavy, heavier than the rod he had now, and Louise hadn’t sent him the reel.
Suddenly his back seemed to fold inward, as if his ribs were hinged to his spine, and a hard knot of tears tightened in his chest. He looked at the rod. I bet she doesn’t know—he thought, and sobs broke through the tightness. I bet she doesn’t know how much a handmade rod like this w
ould cost now. He bent over his lap, the sobs choking in his throat. He felt as if his ribs were cracking.
Louise didn’t know anything about his dad. God, he wished his mother were home. She would know. She would understand how he’d always treasured the bamboo rod.
He looked up at the window where deep blue light had begun to glisten through the frost. His head throbbed.
He fished one of the handkerchiefs out of the paper on the bed and blew his nose hard. The handkerchief smelled of dampness and mildew, closed-up houses. It smelled like Louise’s house, and he never wanted to smell that smell again. He wadded it up and aimed it at the oval plastic wastebasket, sucked in air, and stood up.
With care, he broke the fly rod down, wrapped it, and slid it into the case. Then he went upstairs and dug his duffel bag from the bottom of the closet. He reached under the clothes in his bottom drawer and felt the shotgun shells roll toward the back. He got his fist around them, their red paper jackets like rolls of quarters, and stuffed them in the bottom of the canvas gear bag. Downstairs, he fitted the boots in, then the buckle. Last, he stuck the end of the fly case in. He zipped the bag closed, the rod case sticking out of the corner, and slung it over his shoulder. He wrapped the gun in a towel and cradled it over his arm.
It was nearly dawn outside, the snow giving off a faint glow of blue. He kicked through the drifts, sinking sometimes to his knees, and walked out on the road. The plow hadn’t come yet, but a car had been down the road.
In town, he walked down the center of the street, the snow squeaking like cornstarch under his boots. The sound of his footsteps was the only sound he heard. The stores were closed.
He saw the glow of headlights far down the road and turned away, following the ruts behind the buildings, the way he walked to school. Here, a truck had driven through, somebody feeding cattle, or the milk truck, and the ground was bare.
He headed toward the river. The trees on both sides of the narrow road were frosted white with ice. Ahead, he was faced with a wall of mist. He walked into it, the white blindness like a touch along his cheeks. He took shorter and shorter steps, the slow panic of not being able to see urging him to run. But he knew the mist could be thick all the way to the river. He forced the panic down and swam into the brightness.
Salt tears had frozen on his cheeks and crusted in the corners of his eyes. The only sound was the crunching of his boots on the snow. This is where his dad was, he thought, someplace where the clouds pass right through you.
He noticed willows glistening damp beside the road, and suddenly the mist was gone. The trees up ahead stood out sharp and clear. He walked on. Then the mists came and went. Every time a trickling stream crossed under the road, running to the river, the mist floated over the water and drifted like steam across the road.
He saw the painted sign for the dump and without thinking turned into the drive. The ruts had filled during the night with snow, perfectly smooth and rounded, begging for tracks. He waded into the drifts, circling wide around the caretaker’s trailer, where a thin line of gray smoke drifted from the stovepipe. With effort, he worked his way to the far side of the deepest pit and stepped out to where he thought the rim was. Below him, the cascaded garbage was buried in white drifts, but here and there fires smoldered, and he could make out a table with the laminated surface ripped away, the rusted shell of a washing machine, black tires. And movement. He looked closer. Where a load of lumber had been dumped, the boards stuck out like pickup sticks and made caves in the snow. Huddled along a gray board were three cats. Then another, and up the slope another. A raven cawed in the cottonwoods at the edge of the dump, and his eyes jerked toward the sound. The sky was lightening above the tall, brittle trees.
He laid the rifle down at his feet and unzipped the canvas bag. First he took out the rodeo buckle. It was an oval of silver with a raised gold vine of tiny leaves and flowers circling the edge. The silver was worn down to brass on the back side, and the front was dull with scratches. Kenny could remember his dad wearing the buckle. But he couldn’t wear it. You couldn’t wear somebody else’s prize. The buckle seemed to him like a dead person’s eyeglasses, or false teeth—no good for anything. He tugged off his glove and cradled the icy metal in his hand. Then he hooked his index finger around the edge and snapped it sideways, like a stone, out into the pit. He threw it so hard the tendon in his elbow ached.
The boots were more awkward. The first one landed on the slope, bounced, and skidded a few feet. He didn’t care. Nobody was going to climb down there for one boot. He walked along the rim and heaved the second one so far it struck near the bottom of the pit and disappeared.
He aimed the rod case at the cats. It sailed out over the quarry, floating for a moment like an arrow, the back end dipping lower than the front. Two cats shrank back, but an old tom, his ears flat to his head, only blinked.
He tried to dry his sweating hands on the cloth wrapping the shotgun. He lifted it and broke it open, thumbing in the shells. When he touched the cold gray barrel, it stuck to his wet skin like a metal ice tray. He jerked his hand away.
They had all lied to him. “We’re never going fishing again,” he said to the cat. “And I’m never going to learn to fly.” Sobs broke up through his chest. He opened his eyes and stared out over the dump. The ravens glistened black in the trees. One gave out a sharp, scolding caw and glided, indifferent, to a lower branch. He felt almost boneless. His father was dead, and nobody cared. Not Louise. Not his mother. He could sit there all day waiting for his mother, waiting for anybody. But he knew no one was coming.
He didn’t want his father’s old stuff, not even the rod. He wanted them all to know—they couldn’t buy him off with these things. He planted his feet in the snow, raised the rifle, and took careful aim. The old cat twitched an ear. He fired both barrels, the kick like a baseball thrown hard at his shoulder joint. The tomcat spun in place and shot back in the cave, and the ravens flapped, squawking, into the air. Kenny rammed two more shells in the gun, swung the barrels up, and blasted into the trees.
23
Cynthia dreamed the cool touch on her bare feet was the smoothness of her own sheets. She stretched and opened her eyes. This wasn’t her bed. She was in Dill’s trailer, and the sun was up.
“Mornin’,” Dill said. He hunched down on a stool, his back only inches from the stove. The air in the trailer was thick with the smell of split pine stacked too close to the stove, a smell like scorched ironing. And coffee.
Dill stood, his back unbending slowly, and poured her a mug from his percolator. He waited while she sat up before he handed it to her. She wrapped her palm around the hot coffee and didn’t feel the burn until the thick mug dropped from her hand. It thudded onto the floor and bounced. Scalding coffee splashed on her leg, on the cot, and in a wet brown wedge across the floor. She jumped up, fanning her skirt away from her thighs.
“It’s okay. I got it,” Dill said. He grabbed for a towel on the sink.
He pushed her back down with one hand, lifted her skirt, and folded the towel under the clinging fabric.
“Let me know when you wake up,” he said. “I’ll give it another try.”
It hurt to turn her eyes to look at him, and her head ached. She looked down at the wet stain on the floor and let her hair swing over her face.
“Is Goldie okay?” she asked him. “Where is she?”
“She’s not taking any harm. She’s got plenty of feed and water.”
“Thanks.”
Dill moved, his head bent to walk upright in the trailer, and ducked into the bathroom.
Cynthia thought back to the night before, pushing Goldie through drifts so deep her stirrups dragged in the snow, following her own tire tracks back down the swamp road. She remembered unrelenting cold. Her fingers burned like dry ice until she couldn’t feel the reins in her hand. Finally, she dropped the hard leather and hunched down on Goldie’s neck. She closed her hands into fists under Goldie’s warm mane and spoke to her, urging her on,
begging the old horse to keep moving. When Dill pulled her out of the saddle, she couldn’t walk. He had to carry her inside.
She remembered the heat of the trailer, a cup of coffee. Thin needles of pain shooting through her fingers and toes as they thawed, as she tried to tell Dill what had happened.
Now, it all seemed dark and far away, like something that had happened a long time ago. She heard the toilet flush, and in a moment Dill reappeared.
“I can’t go home,” she said.
“We’ll see,” Dill said. “You get yourself into the bathroom. Put these on.”
He handed her a limp pair of jeans and a flannel shirt.
“Go on.”
The bathroom in the trailer was so tiny she had to squeeze between the sink and toilet. The old carpet was black with stains, and the sink was copper green with oxidation around the drain. But Dill’s comb and brush, his nail clippers, and scissors were arranged in a neat row on a damp wooden shelf. She splashed cold water on her face and reached for a towel hung up on a nail by the mirror. It was so stiff it scratched her cheek, and the sweet, souring smell of mildew clung to her hands and her face.
When she slid open the door, the smell of burning bacon fat filled the trailer and a gray haze of smoke hung in the air. Dill had opened the outer door. She sat down on the cot and looked out. The snow was smooth and white, and the sky, dry and blue, surprised her. It seemed too sharp and clear.
Dill closed the door and motioned her to the table, a shelf that hinged down from the wall. She ate the bacon and eggs on her plate and drank another cup of coffee. The eggs were bubbled and laced crisp around the edges, and the bacon charred black. But the weight of food in her stomach made the coffee taste good.
She smiled at Dill.
“Merry Christmas,” he said.
His eyes twinkled, shadowed by the brim of his wool cap. She realized she never looked at Dill. She noticed how gray his skin seemed, and networks of tiny red veins had crabbed in patches under his eyes.
Love and Country Page 16