Lamb

by Bonnie Nadzam

  “Okay.”

  “That out there.” He pointed to the little ruin of sloping, black-mouthed house. “That could have been the first homestead in the Wyoming Territory. Maybe eighteen fifty. That little broken home could be Cheyenne. First mark on a fresh and hairy green plain.”

  “It’s yellow.”

  “You can imagine it green.”

  She looked out the window.

  “You want to go see?”

  She shrugged.

  “I know,” he said. “It’s farther than it looks and you’re tired.” He raised his voice a bit. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime journey back in time. But our girl was sleepy.”

  “Okay. Let’s get out.”

  He raised his fingertips to his ear.

  “Yes!” she said. “Open the door!”

  “That’s exactly how I want to hear it. I’m just your guide, right? This is your trip. This is your week. I’ll have this cabin for the rest of my life. I’ll have this highway. But this is the only time you’ll get to see it. So come on. Let me hear it: It’s my week, Gary.”

  “It’s my week, Gary.”

  “Good. I want you to be greedy about it.” He unlocked the doors.

  They went over the gravel shoulder and down the irrigation ditch and up again onto hard dry ground. To the north, scores of slanted wooden snow fences set in the grass like empty easels. The wind was loud and the sagebrush shook like knotted gray fists. As far east and as far west as the eye could see, wood posts and a three-wire fence. A blue plastic bag turned over itself in the grass.

  “Oh,” she said. “We can’t.”

  “Oh, you sweet little thing.” He lifted one of the wires between its barbs and held it open. “That’s just a fence.”

  She stepped through and he followed.

  “Ready?” he said, brushing his hands on the thighs of his blue jeans. “Set. Go!” He took off running, his black-and-silver head flashing in the dazzle. “Try to keep up, you lazy pillow pig!” She ran after him and he grinned back at her puffing and bobbing over the uneven ground, stopping her with an arm across her belly when she approached the house. The tops of her cheeks were pink behind her freckles, and her hair stuck in sweat to her temples.

  “Careful,” he said. Rusted orange nails pointed up from the overturned boards.

  Glassless windows, all the house wood gray. A rocking chair the color of dirt sat oddly intact and perfectly still on the wood-slab porch.

  “Someone must have brought it out,” he said, looking at it. “You see any beer cans, you’ll know for sure.”

  “Kids come here?”

  “I bet some guy dragged a mattress out here in his old man’s truck and hauled out a bunch of flashlights and cheap wine and paper cups and cigarettes, and brings out a different girl every Saturday night.”

  “Gary!”

  He put his hands up in the wind. “Hey, I’m just a guy telling you how it is. It’s better if you know. Consider yourself warned.”

  “Sick.”

  “Do you want to go inside and see?”

  “No. It gives me a spooky feeling.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Do you think they died here?”

  “Who? The girlfriends?”

  “No, dummy.” She punched him lightly in the arm and pulled down on her T-shirt, lifted by the wind like a thin yellow flag off her belly. “The people who lived here.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Indians. Snow. Fever. Smallpox. Any number of things. But there’s no graveyard, is there? Which makes me think they probably just moved on.”

  “That’s not as fun to think about.”

  “Don’t get melodramatic on me, Tom. We’ll never survive the week.”

  She made a visor with her hand and looked across the empty grass and around behind the house to a single section of standing rail fence.

  “That’s where they tie up the ghost horses at night,” he told her.

  “Is this what your cabin is like?”

  “I’ve told you what it’s like.”

  “Will we have horses?”

  “Look, Tom. I know I’m a handsome guy and all, but you’re not invited to stay that long.”

  “I was just pretending.”

  “Long as we’re both clear on that.” He turned over his wrist and read his watch. “Five days from now we’ll be driving back the other way, delivering you to your loving mother, and—”

  “—none of this ever happened.” She rolled her eyes. “I know.”

  He dropped his hand and gaped at her. “That’s not what I was going to say. Never happened! Tommie. Of course it will have happened. It’s happening now. Isn’t it?”

  “Duh.”

  “That’s right. And eventually—maybe not right away, but eventually—you’ll tell everyone about it. Right?”

  She snorted. “Yeah, right. I’d be dead meat.”

  “So you wait till you’re eighteen. Or twenty-six. Right now you’re just eleven.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  He lifted her chin with his hand. “Eleven is the most perfect age to be a girl. And you’ll know it the minute you turn twelve.”

  He took her arm and they circled the falling house, stepping carefully through the high grass, lifting their knees as though walking through deep snow.

  They came to the ragged edge of dry weeds and he opened the fence and she stepped through.

  The truck was straight ahead, tilted on the shoulder. He nodded at it. “Race you back?”

  He beat her to the highway by twenty yards and stood at the truck with his hands on his thighs, watching her come as if she hadn’t already lost, her little white fists pumping high at the sides of her flat, narrow chest.

  “That’s a sign of a real athlete,” he said when she reached him. “That’s what you call running through the line.”

  She leaned on her knees, breathing hard. “It’s hard to run.”

  “We’re higher up. Even though it looks flat here,” he said, “there’s less oxygen. It makes it harder for your body to maintain itself.”

  “Like you can hardly run?”

  “Like you can hardly run.”

  He ran his sleeve across his forehead and leaned on his thighs, looking at her. “When you’re a mom you can tell your kids the story about passing through Cheyenne when it was a ghost town of rotted wood and wind, a fox den taken hostage by lonely teenagers, and they’ll think you’re ancient and wise, and you know what?”

  “What.”

  “They’ll be right.”

  That got him a big gap-toothed smile. He loved to see it.

  “You ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “You awake now?”

  “Yep.”

  But in ten minutes and even with the windows down and the radio up she was asleep again, so Lamb pulled off the side of the road to wake her and stepped into the weeds to piss and back in the truck told her far to the north along the same line of longitude was a palace made of corn.

  “I thought we already passed that.”

  “You’re kind of a dreamy kid, aren’t you?”

  He made up a story about barrel racing in the town of Gillette when he was a boy and he told her he was a great ballplayer, second base, and a track star.

  “Hurdles,” he told her. “I won all the medals.”

  “I bet you were one of the cool kids.” She had her head leaned back against the long strap of the seat belt.

  “Ever heard the term road weary?”

  “No.”

  “Well. That’s what you are. Or no. I’ll tell you what it is. The gods getting back at you for being such a pig last night. Stealing both pillows and keeping me up with your snoring.”

  “I do not snore.”

  “How do you know? Ever share a room with someone before?”

  “No.”

  “Well then.”

  “Last night was like a thousand years ago.”

  “Well we’ve entered mountain time. Happene
d in Nebraska.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s mysterious.”

  They reached the next filling station by early afternoon, a mile north of the highway at the edge of a small town encroached upon in all directions by a shimmering flood of weeds. It was an old 76. The concrete foundation was tilted ten degrees, and once bright letters on a placard for soft-serve ice cream were drained of color. Inside he bought the girl a coffee and told her she was grown up enough for a full cup. Told her that the dire circumstances of her weak brain and laziness required it. They both laughed and she filled the cup with sugar and half a dozen little plastic cups of vanilla creamer.

  Lamb went into the men’s room to order a round-trip plane ticket from Chicago to Denver—for Linnie—and when he came outside he found the girl crying quietly beside a greasy trash can spotted with rust. Snot glistening on her upper lip. On the far side of the parking lot a woman was helping a tiny girl into a bright blue windbreaker. Lamb stood beside Tommie and together they watched the mother buckle the child into the backseat of a white minivan. In a moment they were gone, a speck disappearing up the frontage road and turning onto the eastbound highway.

  He put his arm around her shoulders and when she turned to look up at him he stooped beside the trash can and took her face in his hands and brushed the tears from her freckled cheeks with the edge of his sleeve, wiped the snot from her lip with his thumb and wiped it on his jeans. “Do you want to go home, Tommie? Shall I take you home to your mother?”

  “Yes.” Her chest broke open now and she snorted and inhaled stuttering breath. “No.” She looked to him for help.

  “Come,” he said. “Come get in the truck. Let’s talk.” He took her hand and walked her there. In the Ford he put the cell phone in the glove compartment and closed it. “We’ll turn around. We’ll drive straight through the night, okay? You can walk home from that pretty white hotel where we stayed, or I’ll give you taxi money. You can go back to the apartment and all your friends. Tell your mom you wandered off into the woods and fell asleep for days. Like a pretty little girl in a fable.”

  She sat nodding and sniffling in the passenger seat.

  “I’m sorry, Tom. This was a bad idea. I should have known better. People don’t do this, do they? This isn’t the way people behave. I’m older and I should have known better.”

  The girl held her head in her hands. “I’ll get in so much trouble.”

  “No you won’t. You won’t. Everyone will be so happy to see you. You need to just let me steer this now. I’m going to feed you really well and we’ll set you up in back so you can sleep and before you know it you’ll be waking up in your old neighborhood.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I’ll leave town so you have all the room you need to get over this. Nine hundred days and the whole city to yourself. Maybe I’ll drive back through Chicago in a few years, and you can sneak away from your boyfriends and girlfriends to give your poor old horse a little company. Come steal him away from his tall metal hotel downtown, right? Have a run through the open grass before we sneak you back in time for algebra. Right?”

  “I want to stay. I want to stay.” She waved her hand at the windshield. “Go,” she said. “Drive.”

  Our guy picked up her hand. “We’re just going to sit here a minute.” He waited until she stopped crying, then pulled away from the gas pump and parked beside a derelict pay phone. “We are not going to do anything unless I am absolutely certain it’s what you want to do.” She nodded and wiped her nose across her skinny bare forearm. “Oh no,” he said, “don’t do that.” He opened the glove compartment and withdrew a handkerchief. “Here,” he said. He dabbed her tears and held it to her nose. “Blow,” he said. “Go on.” She looked at him, red-eyed and ugly. “Harder,” he said. “Yes. Now that’s a nose-blow. That’s a girl with a little strength!” He dropped his hand into her lap. “My God,” he said, looking at her, “that’s the most extraordinary sound I’ve ever heard. You sound exactly like a goose, or a loon. Do it again.” He lifted the handkerchief, and they both laughed.

  “Better?”

  “Better.”

  He rolled down both windows and turned off the engine. The sound of passing cars and birdsong filled the truck. “All right,” he said. “Let’s try to talk about this rationally. What are the facts?”

  “I’m being a baby.”

  “That’s not a fact. That’s an interpretation, and not one with which I particularly agree. Let me give you an example of a fact. We’re in north South Dakota. Fact.”

  “Okay. It’s early evening.”

  “Hey.” He raised an eyebrow. “That was a pretty little sentence, Tom.” She smiled.

  “What else have you got?”

  She paused and looked him in the eye. “I’m running away from home.”

  Lamb widened his eyes. “You are?”

  She looked down at the handkerchief, twisted in her hands. “Maybe.”

  “Oh, Tommie.” He stared out the windshield. “I don’t know how that makes me feel.”

  Nothing.

  “You could have told me that was what you were doing. Did you think I wouldn’t let you come with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “I thought you wouldn’t let me because I don’t want to go back.”

  “But right now you do want to go back.”

  “I feel bad!” Her voice rose to a thin, hysterical pitch and she was crying again.

  “Ssh. I know. It’s okay. Listen. Listen, Tom. Do you remember our deal?”

  “We spend a week, then you take me back.”

  “Almost.”

  “We spend a few days and you take me back.”

  “That’s correct. And is that running away from home?”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s like a vacation, right?”

  “But a secret vacation.”

  “Well. I don’t know how I feel about the word secret. It’s more like the kind of thing a teenager would do, right? A teenager vacation.”

  She wiped her nose with the handkerchief.

  “And you agreed to this deal.”

  “Yes.”

  “No running away.”

  “No.”

  “Good,” he said. “I don’t know how it makes me feel, that you were keeping this from me.”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Hey now, hey now.” He ran his hand from her forehead into her hair. “Take it easy. I was a teenager too, once. Ten thousand years ago. I know what it’s like. And I bet seeing that mom and her little girl gave you a little bruise right here, right?” He pressed her breast with his thumb, right where her heart would be.

  She nodded.

  “Well, let’s talk about this. Because if you feel bruised about something you didn’t even do—like run away—then our trip is off to a pretty shaky start. And we have to get it back on track together. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Tom, look at me. Good girl. Can you give me a smile? I love to see that. Good. Now tell me if you feel like you’re running away.”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m going back in a few days.”

  “You’re not abandoning your mother.”

  She shook her head, lips pulled into her mouth and her eyes filling up again, and he put his hands around her face and drew in close, his breath warm and steady on her mouth and nose and chin.

  “No. You’re not. She is probably worried, but we’ll send a postcard, and she’ll get it tomorrow, or maybe the next day, and that will make her feel a lot better.” He held her face close and spoke nearly into her mouth. “And by the time she gets worried again, you’ll be knocking at the door. A little more mature, a little wiser. Your beautiful long hair kissed with October sun from being so high up in the mountains. And she’ll be able to see all this, won’t she?”

  “Yes.”

&nbs
p; “And it will be such a relief to her, that you’re growing up wise and straight and tall.” His voice a soft and easy rush against her face.

  “Yes.”

  “And she’ll love you more than ever. And you’ll love her more than ever.”

  “Yes.”

  “There is room enough in your heart, Tom, for more love than you know, okay?” He looked directly into her eyes. She glanced up, and down again to the thin yellow stripe across the chest of his shirt, and back up again.

  “Okay.”

  “That probably doesn’t mean much to you now, but I want you to remember that I said it. I want you to remember that your heart includes everything. It is very, very big. No matter what gets in there—bad feelings, sorry feelings, ashamed feelings—you don’t have to cast it out. You just let your heart contain it all.”

  “Okay.”

  “I sound a little funny, don’t I?” He backed up, releasing his hands from her face. She smiled and nodded. “How are we doing now? Should we go back to our facts?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll start. Here’s a fact: you blow your nose like a honking loon.”

  She laughed. “You make me laugh.”

  “Oh, sweetheart. That’s my favorite fact of the day.” He smiled broadly and took her face in his hands again and kissed her forehead. “Is that okay? If I do that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” he said, sitting up straight. “I think that made me blush a little. Did that make you blush?”

  “A little.”

  He smiled. “How about this one: we’re almost there.”

  “We are?”

  “Another fact: this is the only time you and I will ever be in his truck together, in the middle of the day, at the skirt of the mountains.”

  “We could go west or east.”

  “Eventually, come hell or high water, Tom, you’re going back east.”

  “I think we should go on to the Old El Rancho Road.”

  He raised a hand. “Now don’t be so hasty, Tommie. If you change your moods so fast, I’ll feel like you don’t really know what you want. Like you’re too young for this. I’ll get to thinking you’re just saying what I want to hear.”

  “Oh.”

  “Listen, dear. It is of the utmost importance to our friendship—to me—that I not feel like a bully here. Okay?”