It wasn’t until they’d crossed the Idaho panhandle that Cecil realized they weren’t on the way back to the ranch outside Box Elder.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked when they passed a sign indicating they’d entered Washington.
“You want to go back to that camp?” Pete asked.
“Where are we going?”
“Spokane.”
“What for?”
“You think you can make it on your own?”
“Holy shit.”
“If you don’t think you can, I gotta take you back.”
“Hot shit. Holy shit. For real?”
Pete nodded.
“Holy fuck. Awesome.”
“What I said wasn’t true. About your mom trying. She never tried. I only said it for your sister.”
“Sure.”
Cecil’s mind raced forward down the road, out of the pickup, into the Next.
“Cecil, look at me.”
The boy’s face was wild with freedom. He put his hands on the dashboard and was shaking his head in wonder.
“She was a piece of shit, Cecil. She didn’t try a day in her life. I was wrong to have put you in the—”
“You’re not fucking with me?”
“I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry.”
“You’re really letting me out in Spokane. For real.”
“Yes. Your friend, Ell, she called to tell me to tell you they’d moved to Spokane. That you were still welcome.”
“No way.”
“Listen. I’m going to tell Pine Hills you ran away. You can’t come back to Montana.”
“This is so fucking awesome.”
“You can’t come back. At least not for a long time. You hear me?”
“No. Yeah. I won’t.” He drummed the dashboard. “This is so goddamn awesome!”
Bear had found a janitor gig in Spokane. Pete pulled up to their apartment and when Ell came out, astonishing tears ran down Cecil’s face, and his nose ran, and Ell started crying as well. She twisted to hug him with the baby. Pete helped him get his bag, and Cecil bounced into her apartment with her and she showed him his room.
Pete slipped away before Cecil could say good-bye or thank him.
Did she watch Yo work?
On accident.
A not unhandsome forty-year-old man with a leather satchel and nice gray hair at his temples moved with purpose up the block and she followed. Paused at a mailbox, as if dropping in a letter, and then went in among the girls along the graffitied wall, girls who mashed out smokes and scurried over when he started to chat with Yo. She watched Yo walk up the street, disappear around the corner with the man, and come back surprisingly soon.
After that she watched from across the street. The girls just stood around smoking or chewing gum and then a guy would come and one of them would leave with him and come back later.
Did she follow Yo into the hotel and sneak past the front desk and find the room? Did she listen at the door as Yo serviced this man?
No.
She asked Yo about it later, as Yo douched in the apartment bathroom.
Was it less frightening than she imagined? According to Yo was it just a matter of teasing it out of the guy, so little touching really, and that you don’t have to kiss the customer, you don’t even have to really look him in the eye, yeah, there is a little weirdness sometimes—a guy will try put a finger in your butt or he might want to toss you around—but you just keep yourself between him and the door and keep your pepper spray nearby is all. When it comes down to it, all anybody wants is to get their rocks off and feel cool about it. Was it just a matter of being cool?
Of course it wasn’t.
But it seemed that way.
She swallowed a couple of times and almost didn’t ask it, but then she did: Would you help me if I tried it?
Yo acted as if Rose had just asked to borrow a comb, just nodded sure.
What was it like?
It was like this: Yo introduced her to other girls. To a one, they were young and kind to her. They shunted away the freaks and rough ones that were known to them. Yo told her to be confident and just ask the guy inside the car if he wanted a date. Then to do what he asked for.
How much?
Tell him it’s your first time and you want as much as he’s got.
Really?
Yes. Really.
The car rolled up along the curb. Yo nudged Rose, and she walked over, thinking this is the car where I will become a whore. Astonishment shivered over her. Yet most of the girls she knew were. Rose didn’t feel like she was dressed right in just her regular clothes. Her sneakers looked childish and she had no idea yet that that was the idea, that she would now be trying to look childish, girlish, and whorish. Still, she couldn’t imagine giving a guy head in these sneakers.
Was her first date kind?
Kind enough. He was thrilled by the claim that this was her first time—though he didn’t believe it—and he tried to kiss her on the mouth, and she let him because she didn’t know how to stop him. She didn’t know how to stop anything. He gave her forty-five dollars, which seemed a fortune.
Yo said that wasn’t too shabby.
She soon learned to climb in the car, show the date where to park, and say, You can’t kiss me. I touch you. You can’t kiss me. I do all the work. You tell me what you like and I’ll do it, and if it costs more, I’ll tell you.
Did she ever get in a car and feel in the way the date breathed through his nose or pinged his eyes to the rearview every few minutes that she should get out at the next light get out right away, that this one was too sketchy?
Yeah, but she didn’t think it would happen to her. The dates were so goddamn grateful for her tiny hands, her wry, filthy mouth that expressed in word and act a twisted and premature craving for cum, for specific cum, for your special cum, only cum, let me get it out of there, baby, I need it, give it to me, give me your goddamn cum baby. Give it. Come on. Cum for me. Come on.
And then it was three or four in the morning, and Rose and Yo would make their way in the dark back to the Golden Arms and Yo would give Pomeroy her money and Rose would too.
And Pomeroy would buy them presents with it?
Yes. A ghetto blaster for the apartment and new velvet pillows and a box of comic books and strawberry shampoo.
He talked about getting other girls, making some real money.
Did she get diseases?
Of course. Herpes came in a series of hot pinpricks between her legs. Yo took her to the free clinic on Madison Street. After she was examined, she waited for counseling in an office jam-packed with boxes of rubbers and other contraception, douches and paperwork. She fidgeted and then a large maternal counselor came in with a clipboard.
So where are you from, Rose?
Montana.
Family there?
Not really. My mom’s in Texas. That’s where I was last.
Bad situation at home?
She didn’t want to talk about it.
Where do you live?
Rose looked at the counselor with suspicion.
What’s with all the questions? Are you gonna give me medicine or not?
The counselor pulled off her cardigan sweater and pumped her collar up and down to cool off.
This is all just so I can help. I could maybe get you a place to stay for a little bit if you’re interested. Do you ever use protection?
I don’t like rubbers.
Do you like herpes?
Rose closed her eyes, gripped the armrests of her chair.
When was your last period?
I only ever had a couple.
Well, you’re young yet. Would you know if you missed one?
I guess not.
So you might be pregnant. How would you feel about having a baby, Rose?
I dunno.
Would you consider an abortion?
No. The baby didn’t do anything wrong.
How would you take care of a child?
<
br /> I dunno. You got some services I bet. Or is all you do abortions?
The woman sighed and leaned forward. Sweat was beading over her lip.
You’re getting services right now. One of the services is trying to head off a pregnancy that both of us know you’re not prepared to handle.
Rose couldn’t concentrate on what the woman was saying. Her brain just wouldn’t engage with it.
You got sweat on your lip.
The woman set the clipboard in front of her and didn’t wipe off the sweat or even acknowledge that Rose had noticed it. She handed Rose a packet of pamphlets bound by a rubber band.
This is some literature. Read it and then sign down here. Here’s a box of condoms. Use them.
What about . . . ?
The herpes?
Yeah.
Go to the drugstore and get some aspirin. Take a hot bath.
That’s it?
That’s it.
The woman’s grin was faint, serene, maddening.
TWENTY-NINE
Just back from dropping Cecil off in Spokane, Pete was stopped at a crosswalk in Tenmile waiting for an old cowboy to shuffle across the street when the judge spotted him from the courthouse lawn. The judge had taken a rake from a groundskeeper and was demonstrating some aspect of lawncraft when he noticed his own car and shouted at him and waddled over on his fat legs. Pete could tell the man had bad news.
“What is it?”
“You haven’t been to your place.”
“No, I was out of town. Why? What’s going on?”
“It’s gone, Pete.”
“What’s gone?”
“Your house.”
When they got there, the earth around the cabin was wet, and everything Pete had owned was now ash or burned beyond recognition in the charred crater. His heat-warped bed frame and coils of mattress springs sat in the dirt and black remnants of the wood floor. He climbed down onto the cast-iron stove where it had fallen into his cellar. He pulled several blackened potatoes from the earthen shelf and touched around the still-warm molten glass of a burst jar of pickles. That was all that was left. His books, his pictures of Rachel, his leather chair. A curl of his daughter’s hair he kept in a small jar on the shelf in his room. Love letters. His baby book. Quilts his mother had made him. His rifles and his great-grandfather’s .22 pistol.
For some reason, he thought of the piece of paper with his brother’s address on it, and then vaguely recalled putting it in his wallet. He looked and there it was, along with a small school picture of his daughter when she was ten, the scrawled phone number of some woman he no longer remembered, and several business cards. This and forty-odd dollars. His possessions entire.
The judge watched him thumbing through his wallet and then told him to come on out of there, and when he did his hands were black all over and he started chuckling.
The judge remarked sarcastically that Pete was taking the fire well.
Pete gripped his knees and shook in his helpless chortling.
“You’ve gone around the goddamn bend,” the judge said. “Come on, let’s get over to the courthouse and have a drink.”
Pete sat on the hood of the Monte Carlo and started to roll a cigarette.
“That’s all right, I’m good.”
“Nonsense. You come with me. You can stay with me.”
Pete smiled.
“Thanks, but no.”
“You gonna stay in Missoula?”
“Nah.”
“Your father’s?”
“God no.”
The judge shoved his hands in his pants pockets and watched Pete roll the cigarette and begin to smoke with diminishing acknowledgment at the things the judge said, how it’d be all right, how these things happen, that Pete would get on his feet again. How it was damn lucky that Jim McGinnis just happened to have his water tenders back from the fires outside of Whitefish. Could’ve lit up the whole mountain.
Pete nodded.
The judge said again that Pete should stay with him, and Pete again begged off. Smoking and grinning like a lunatic. The judge finally said for Pete to go to hell then, and climbed in the car.
He went to Pearl’s house up Fourth of July Creek. There were mice and a hornet’s nest and more than a few barn spiders fat as cotton balls, but when the Pearls lit out they’d left their home more or less furnished and Pete was able to make it clean and comfortable inside of a week. He swept up the dust and pellets of rodent shit and flushed the bats from the eaves. A bird’s nest caught fire inside the stovepipe the first time he lit it, and he went outside and chased down the large burning ashes of leaves and scrap paper that floated away from the house, glowing malefic in the dark and sometimes catching in the trees and burning the witches moss and other times landing in the dry grasses around the house. He wondered the while was he fated to burn down the forest.
Cloninger lived a few miles down the road and Pete was able to visit Katie and never left without a plate of Mrs. Cloninger’s corn bread or a tureen of casserole or soup. He held an old margarine container of corn and pumpkin chowder when his brother’s parole officer rolled by, slow and then suddenly accelerating, kicking up a plume of dust meant for Pete.
Wes Reynolds followed him up to the Pearls’ house. Pete looked on as Wes inspected the Pearls’ home for signs of Luke, opening cupboards and thumbing through dog-eared Bibles and then as he went out and shined a flashlight under the house.
“How many times do I have to tell you I don’t know where he is?”
“No, you said you did know. And that you would never tell me.”
Wes crossed the meadow to the burnt-out Airstream trailer and walked to the cliff. Replaying their last exchange up at the Yaak country store made Pete wonder if Wes was the one who’d burned down his cabin.
I’m never going to tell you. And you’ll never find him, I’ll make sure of that.
You just fucked up, man.
That some kind of threat?
It certainly had been some kind of threat. By the time Wes went up the hill behind Pearl’s house, Pete was all but sure he’d set his home afire. Wes spent some time at a pile of loose stones near the empty chicken coop and asked about it when he got back, wanting to know how they got there.
“You torched my house.”
Wes put a thumb through a belt loop and tipped back his hat.
“Maybe your brother left a cigarette going up there.”
“All because you got beat up? Don’t you have a sense of proportion?”
“You should’ve told me where he is.”
“You think I’m going to now?”
“Of course not,” Wes said, heading down the hill. “But the fucker has one less place to rack out.”
He sipped coffee and watched a pair of deer eat in the meadow. The morning had been downright cold and Pete wondered did deer worry about that, were they eating quickly, did they hate the cold. He realized this worry about the deer was a worry for Rachel. Some of the larch shed their needles, showering yellow and orange pins in each brisk, pining gust.
Pete cleared his throat. The deer lifted their heads and ceased chewing. In a brindled blur they leapt into the forest, and then he saw Benjamin jump over a stump, followed by Jeremiah, who stepped on it, surveyed the meadow, the tree line, the sky, and then strode out after his boy.
Pete’s heart lifted, sang a little. He went outside and waved at them and was honestly moved to see them, it felt like such a long time. Grasshoppers sprang away from Benjamin in dozens like a herald in miniature, and when he got to the stream he squatted down and in a moment had something cupped in his hands. Pete asked to see what it was when he got up to the house, and the boy put a green and yellow frog in Pete’s palms. The two of them petted it and felt its frightened, urging heart.
Ben looked good. He had a scrape over his eye that had mostly healed, his hands were filthy, and he reeked of campfire, but he had color in his face, weight too. Pete told him so.
“There’s frogs all
down there,” Benjamin said. His eyes were bright as new pennies. “You can get one anytime you want.”
“I will,” Pete said, touching the boy’s head.
Pearl hiked up the rocks to where Pete and Ben stood by the house and scanned the meadow for a moment again, then nodded and grunted a greeting when Pete said hello. Pete handed the frog back to Ben and reached out to shake Pearl’s hand, and the man took it and pumped it succinctly.
“I’m squatting,” Pete said, answering Pearl’s unasked question. “My cabin burned down.”
“How’d it burn down?” Benjamin asked, thrilled.
“I was away. It was cinders when I got back.”
“Maybe lightning hit it.”
“Maybe. Can I get you a cup of coffee, Jeremiah?”
The man had been listening to Pete answer the boy’s questions about the fire and now looked about uneasily.
“There wasn’t no storm.”
“I can be out of here pronto,” Pete said. “I’ll git if you want to winter here.”
“Passing through,” Pearl said.
“You should stay.”
“We most certainly should not.”
“Let me fix you a cup of coffee.”
“It’s all right.”
“I wish you’d visit a little.”
“Well,” he said flatly.
“Let me get you a cup. It’s fresh.”
Benjamin was already back in the meadow for more frogs. A small sigh from Pearl.
“I take it black. Put in a little water to cool it off. I don’t want to wait on it.”
Pete did as the man asked and brought out the coffee and again invited Pearl into his own house. Pearl sat on the ground cross-legged and sipped the coffee.
“There’s a little firewood out behind the chicken coop,” Pearl said. “Not enough for winter, but some.”
Pete thanked him, asked how the coffee was. Pearl grunted.
“I met Stacks,” Pete announced.
Pearl paused briefly, sipping his coffee, and then took a swallow and said, “Pinkerton, you mean.”
Fourth of July Creek (9780062286451) Page 36