He stops washing.
“Is this because you’re angry with me?” he asks.
“I stepped into this business because it was right here. It was what I knew.” I stare at the sponge in his hand, unable to meet his eyes. “I need to see what else is out there.”
He nods his head as if to say, It’s because you’re angry with me.
“I’ve never seen the ocean, Pop.” I sit on the bumper. “I want to see tall buildings and trains that run.”
He drops his sponge in the bucket.
“Maybe there’s a place where I’ll fit in better,” I say, finally looking directly at him. “Maybe there’s a place where I won’t have to work so hard at making friends.”
“I’ve nagged you too much,” he says.
The school bus rumbles to the front of the hotel, washed clean so it’s yellow again.
My father sits beside me on the bumper as children file out of the hotel, carrying suitcases and boxes. We watch Minnow at the back of the line. I want to touch Pop’s arm, but I’ve thought about it too long, and I clasp my hands together instead.
One by one, students board the bus. When the door squeals shut, Slim, waving good-bye to Fritz, drives the boarders back to their families. These children will find their ranches slopped in mud after all that melting snow, coating the legs and bellies of their livestock. They’ll meet the new calves. And they’ll also see the ugly but necessary work to be done after a harsh winter. Because there’s livestock and there’s deadstock, the range littered with carcasses, and the grim work of tracking down the dead. One way you find them is by looking at the sky and seeing where the birds are clustered and diving. You can see those birds even now.
Some of these kids will help, or at least look on, as ranchers get out the backhoe and drag carcasses to the far end of the property, careful not to go too close to a stream or you’ll get runoff in the water supply. They’ll lay out the bodies in a single line on a bed of straw or sawdust, never letting them touch, then cover them with manure. The line of deadstock will be a long one on each of the ranches this year, and it will be someone’s job to turn them now and then, like any other composting job, and to keep the dogs from rolling in all that rot.
“I don’t know how I’ll manage without you,” Pop says.
“You’ll have to take better care of yourself. I won’t be here to wake you up.”
“Have I been a burden to you?” he asks.
“Oh, Pop,” I whisper.
There is a slight lift at the corner of his mouth, but not a smile, as if he understands that his best effort left some bruising.
The prairie has shed its winter brown, and the quiet palette of colors I know so well has returned—orange stems of scrub willow, the blue gray of new sagebrush, and grass finally, though only briefly, green again. Rattlers slide from their dens, and buds grow plump and ready to burst.
I stand at the back of my van, doors open. Pop carries my duffel bag, the last of what I’ve packed. He’s wearing his happy suit. And it sits in my throat, all my feelings of love and sorrow and anger and aloneness and belonging that I don’t know how to express except by doing this.
I am leaving Petroleum. I am leaving to preserve a part of me that can’t flourish here. For too long, I’ve made choices based on the opinions of others, ignoring my own impulses and dreams. I’m not even sure what those dreams are or whether they’re fully formed. All I know is I’ve lived a cautious life, and it hasn’t made me happy.
“You’re sure your van can survive a long drive?” he asks.
“I had a mechanic—the bartender—look at the engine,” I say. “He told me, ‘You can’t call this thing good as new, but you can call it good enough.’”
Pop looks over my shoulder. I look to my feet.
“You’ll be okay here? With the business?” I ask.
“Yep,” he says. “Are you having second thoughts?”
I want to reach out, but I slip my hands into my pockets instead.
“No, Pop. I have to go.”
I step closer to him, and he grabs me in an embrace so tight I know he understands I will only come back as a visitor, that this is his home now, and not ours. What I don’t say is how proud I am that he’s my father, even with our secrets and our silences.
When he releases me, he says only, “Drive safe.”
And I say, “I’ll send you my address when I have one.”
I get inside and close the door. The engine starts right away.
I sit here awhile and take a long look at the only home I’ve known. The house that began with my mother and father dreaming a life together and planting the two burnt rosebushes that he will not dig up.
“Van working okay?” he calls through the glass.
I roll down the window but can’t speak. When he rests his arm on the frame, I grab his wrist. It is my desperate need to be close though we don’t really know how.
We stay here, awkwardly pressing each other into the rim of glass until the need to hold on increasingly becomes the need to break free. I let his hand go, put the car in reverse, and Pop steps back from the van. I roll slowly away, not daring to look. Only when I reach the road and shift into drive do I turn to him.
Pop, in his green suit, holds his hand up in good-bye. I think he may stay here as long as there is a town. If the town’s forgiven him, and it seems that the warm breeze is all that’s needed to make it so, he may even see its end, ensuring that it comes to a close with the dignity and ceremony a life deserves.
I pass the Goldens’ home and wonder how long it will be before the kids find a way in. What I am certain of is that they will walk through the rooms of Dead Eddie and the Younger Brother. They will open drawers and claim all that was left behind. I’m sure they will turn on the oxygen tank, aiming the tube at each other so that Doris can breathe on them, as if from the grave.
I drive from Crooked Hill Road through the ever-expanding potholes of Main Street. I pass the unemployed who’ve claimed their spots for the day along the wall of the Pipeline. A couple of them watch me leave. A boy walks in the road without a shirt—it’s half tucked into a back pocket—his chest sunken and shoulder blades sharp, but his strut says that today he is a man. On the next block, children bake mud pies at the rusted stove that may sit forever in that vacant lot. I breathe in the dust that sprays through the window.
I thought I would shout “Good riddance” when I finally drove away, but I can hardly see the road for my tears, can hardly take a full breath for the space these people take up inside me.
I thought I’d feel disdain for those I’m leaving behind, but all I feel right now is admiration. There are not many left like these folks. The child who, without malls, fast food, or movie theaters, spends his free time exploring abandoned buildings, sometimes falling through collapsed boards, surviving such falls with glee. The rancher who wakes up at five in the morning, and before he’s had anything to eat, steps into his mucking boots and feeds the stock. The grandmother who must get out of her truck at every cattle guard, opening the gate in rain and snow and subzero temperatures. These are people with hands rough from labor, and faces creased from a life lived outdoors, from worry over loved ones and making ends meet. There is a spirit here of durability, of hard, physical work, of sacrifice and survival.
No matter where I go, I will always think of a year in terms of a rancher’s four seasons, and the weather in terms of how it will impact lives here—This rain will be good for the crops. This dampness will bring out the rats. This freeze may put the calves in danger.
Outside the grain elevator, bikes are thrown on their sides but there is no singing. I wonder if there will be new songs this year, or if the story of Dead Eddie is one this town will always need to tell.
When I reach the turn for the highway, I stop and get out, hair blowing across my face. My father still stands in the driveway. I will miss the simplicity of our time at the kitchen table—the smell of burnt muffins, the paper opened between us, news
print on Pop’s fingers. I’ll miss hearing his plans for the day. Maybe he’ll finally fix that creaky board on the front porch or move the rusted hotel sign off our lawn.
Nowhere will ever feel more like home than this place. It’s in my genes, sometimes feeling more like a cleft palate or a clubfoot, but just as much a part of me. With my leaving, there are 178 residents here, and as another high school commencement approaches, six more graduates will decide whether to stay or go. Most, I’m guessing, will move away, chasing opportunities and lifestyles they see on TV. The empty buildings in Petroleum will stay empty, roof tiles and shutters will work loose and fly away bit by bit with each storm, and the walls will tip still farther from the wind.
I won’t be here for branding season—ranchers wrestling down calves to tag and vaccinate and mark them with hot pokers, the little fellas (as Pop likes to call them) bawling and smelling of burnt hide. I won’t see high school students up on the rimrocks, touching up the white paint on the giant letter P. I won’t be a part of how this story ends because it belongs to those who stay.
I get back in the van and turn left on Highway 200, the town, the gray tower disappearing behind me, elk, still in threadbare winter coats, zigzagging and then gone. There is no guarantee for what I’ll find on the other end of this journey. But in a way, it’s the thrill of not knowing that excites me. After living so long in my basement world, I crave the far more unpredictable emotions of the beating heart. I long to do more and see more, to be a part of the gloriously flawed and chaotic world of the living.
Farther out, there and there and there, plumes of smoke rise. It’s burn season so you might smell anything at all burning. I’ll miss even this. But my foot stays on the gas. Something beyond this town is drawing me. I dream of places I only know in my imagination, built of Robert’s words. I want to taste foods made of spices I can’t pronounce, hear languages that aren’t taught in school. I try to imagine air with salt in it. What does that even mean? I only know I must find out.
When I start my life someplace new, I will not be cautious. I will buy rolls of paper and art supplies. Perhaps I will learn to dance and wear my best jewelry, even when there’s no occasion. I don’t know if my future will include Robert in it, or if I even need that, but Seattle will be my first stop. We will at least, at long last, share a cup of coffee. And then I, or we, may go anywhere at all.
Soon the home I’ve known all my life will be a place I go in my sleep, a story I tell to strangers. Petroleum, I will tell them, is a town you won’t likely drive past, and if you blink, you might not see it at all. It’s a story of wind and the havoc it wreaks, of the outside world encroaching and time encroaching, and yet, its people, beat up like the tilted monument beside the highway, defiantly persist. They don’t ask a lot from life, just a two-fingered wave when they pass each other on the road, a game of pinochle or a beer on the weekend, and a chance to look out and up and see nothing in the way for miles.
Tonight when the sun drops low, when the tractors and machines are shut off, the hot engines smoking and clicking as they cool, when the cattle have been fed and are left to their mysterious chattering, the remaining people of this town will head toward their lighted homes, the air pungent with sagebrush, jackrabbits coming out of their burrows to forage, the brown remnants from winter blowing away with the wind. They will untie their worn and dirty work boots and set them outside the door.
For those who stay, Petroleum is home. This is what they know—this life, this land—it is not only where they live; it is who they are. They may be a dying breed, but if they are dying, they would like to die here. For however many days or years remain, they’ll choose to end their evenings looking up from their battered porches, wrapped in stars.
Acknowledgments
This book would not be possible without my beloved agent, my star, Gail Hochman; my fearless editor and wine buddy, Sara Nelson; the whole brilliant team at HarperCollins, with special shout-outs to Amanda Pelletier and Mary Sasso; and to these inspiring souls: Ron Carlson, Kim Chinquee, Bridgett Davis, Juliet DeWal, Jessica Keener, Dylan Landis, Caroline Leavitt, Wayétu Moore, Helen Simonson, Jim Tomlinson, David Ulin, and Amy Wallen. You were absolute lifelines for me and for this book. Thank you for your sharp editorial eye, for lending me confidence when mine had run out, for giving nudges and asking questions that plunged me deeper into the work, for encouraging me to let go of the handrail and be bold on the page and in the world.
The warmest appreciation to the people of Winnett, who invited me into their homes, gave me tours of ranches, told me their stories, and understood I would breathe a whole lot of make-believe into their world; to Marty Lee Moses for answering all my mortician questions; and to these authors, whose books taught me so much about the dead, the dying, and consequently, the living: Mary Roach, Stiff; Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery; and Kenneth Iserson, Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies?
Gratitude to the editors of these fine literary magazines, where portions of this book first appeared: The Coachella Review (“Our Little Angel”), Elm Leaves Journal (“Dead Eddie”), and New World Writing (“Cold Hands,” “The White Sheet,” “The Embalmer’s Threads,” “The Blue Hour,” and “The Last Thing”).
Finally, to the three who mean the world to me—David, Trevor, and Dylan—thank you for being so deliriously and fantastically you.
There are more I’d like to acknowledge, but when I started to write a list of names it felt wrong. The list went on and on, and I was tormented by people I might have left out. The list included everyone who ever touched a single page of my work, including the fifty-four chapters I eventually threw away. It included anyone who ever inspired me, reminded me to take a break, gave me a shoulder to cry on or a place to stay and write. The list included plenty who don’t even know I exist, just those I stalk online and learn from their work ethic, perseverance, or the balance they’ve brought to their lives. Many others on the list were long-dead, mighty voices from the past, talking about craft or simply teaching through the literature they left behind.
I think of this giant body of writers as my tribe. We are a community of avid readers, of misfits and introverts, of observers and deep thinkers. Many of us work in a near constant state of doubt, consumed with the ways our ideas seem so big when we dream them and so small when we translate them to the page. We know what it is to write through a fog, to write into a dead end. We share the scars of rejection, of “help” from people who may have meant well as they wrote notes in the margins of our stories that read like hate letters. We face the same, hounding questions that make us feel like failures: Have you finished your book yet? Oh, still? When do you think it will be done?
We’ve all been in this game longer than our résumés would indicate. Many times, we’ve considered giving up, the experience too discouraging. Our drawers and hard drives are filled with stories that didn’t work or didn’t sell. Many in our lives wonder when we will get a real job, encouraging us to move along to something more reasonable and lucrative. But we keep on, writing with no guarantee of success, because something inside speaks louder than logic or fear.
And so, it’s to you, this beautiful and bruised body of writers, that I must thank for creating the paths I’ve followed, for opening the doors I’ve walked through, for teaching me how to fight the self-doubt, for being generous with your time and your heart. I thank you if you ever held one of my terrible drafts and taught me to nurture rather than strike out against that wrinkled and trembling life. I thank you for providing company on this long, strange journey. We are in this together.
About the Author
SUSAN HENDERSON is the author of Up from the Blue, a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award. Her work has been published in books such as The Future Dictionary of America, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and many magazines and newspapers. She blogs for the writer support group LitPark.com.
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Praise for Up from the Blue
“A haunting tale of the terrible ways in which we fail each other; of the whys, the what ifs, and the what nows. This is not a book you’ll soon forget.”
—Sara Gruen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of At the Water’s Edge and Water for Elephants
“Up from the Blue deftly portrays a family with contradictions we can all relate to—it’s beautiful and maddening, hopeful and condemning, simple, yet like a knot that takes a lifetime to untangle. You will love it completely, even as it hurts you . . . it’s a heartbreaking, rewarding story that still haunts me.”
—Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“[An] elegant debut. . . . Henderson’s fascinating novel fearlessly examines the complexities of depression, romantic and filial love, and motherhood. Beautiful, funny, sad, and complicated, Tillie’s quest to understand her complex, troubled family is filled with lush descriptions of painfully emotional moments.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Haunting and unsettling, Up from the Blue’s real alchemy is the way it uncovers the stories that alternately save us and keep us from our real truths. Incandescently written, this is a stunning debut with heart.”
—Caroline Leavitt, author of Girls in Trouble and Pictures of You
“Up from the Blue is a heart-wrenching, tender story with a mystery that kept my pulse racing. What a joy to discover Tillie Harris, the most memorable, charming, and plucky narrator in fiction since Scout Finch.”
—Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties
Also by Susan Henderson
Up from the Blue
Copyright
The Flicker of Old Dreams Page 24