Godspeed

by Nickolas Butler

  How she wanted to be remembered was riding horses and swimming in those hot springs, hiking the high ridgelines and peaks, and exploring caves and canyons. And as such, Gretchen had no gray memories of her mother dying. Only a bright slideshow of an adventurous childhood; her parents with the crystalline focus of those who know their time is short.

  She had started college at Barnard, later transferring across Broadway to Columbia as soon as it went co-ed. She was invigorated by Manhattan, walking the streets arm in arm with girlfriends and feeling so much more worldly, so much more complicated. She could be sharply rude and flippant to people she would have been kind to even two years before, people she recognized as country folk, slow-talkers who, depending on how you saw it, were either admirably or tragically sincere. Oh, but those people reminded her of her Midwestern parents, and of that sad old rancher. The world was streaking right past them at the speed of light while they clung on to some antiquated code of conduct. How quaint, she thought. All the while trying to put the thought of her mother’s cancer out of her mind.

  It took her three years to weary of the city, the alienation she felt riding the subway, the masks people wore on their commutes to camouflage their emotions, their very humanity. Her apartment was robbed three times within the span of a month, the last incident while she was asleep; she woke in the night to the sound of the robber closing her bedroom door and slipping away like a wraith.

  She never felt homesick for Iowa, knew in her heart she was not destined for Des Moines or Dubuque, Sioux City or Cedar Rapids. But Wyoming . . . The more time she spent in the metropolis, the more she hungered for nature, and entering her fourth year of college, she was ravenous. Desperate to encounter some form of wildlife other than a rat or squirrel, a pigeon or starling.

  She began calling her parents once a week and writing them letters. She imagined graduating that spring and dedicating herself to her mother; taking her to doctor’s appointments and cooking for her. She would lie in her narrow single bed, envisioning every line of topography on that Wyoming property. She could feel her horse below her, as they moved beside the river and up, up, up into the mountains. In that claustrophobic apartment, she imagined the smell of pine and sage, woodsmoke and horse sweat.

  Then, a week before her graduation, not long after she’d spoken to her mother on the phone and promised her that she would in fact be spending the whole summer at the hot springs, her parents died in a car crash. An eighteen-wheeler lost control on one of the mountain roads near their cabin, killing them instantly.

  Borrowing money from a friend, she flew to Salt Lake City, then hitchhiked east, arriving in Jackson and the mortician’s office.

  “I’m so sorry, darling,” the undertaker said, running his hands through long white-yellow hair and then smoothing his mustache. “I don’t know how to say this delicately, but the accident your parents had . . . was . . . horrific. We did the best we could to, ah, reassemble their bodies, but . . .”

  She watched as this old man turned his back to her, reached into his back pocket for a handkerchief, blew his nose before collecting himself, and turned back to her.

  “I’ve been in this business for forty years,” he said, “and I’ve never seen such a terrible accident. Truth be told, I haven’t been able to sleep a whole lot since.” He shook his head as if to dislodge the memories of the aftermath of the accident; dislodge and dispose of his nightmare visions.

  “There was nothing to do but cremate them,” he explained, his eyes red with sadness. “In good conscience, I could never allow you to see . . . I’m so sorry, darling.”

  Her grief in that moment was overwhelming. All the months and months of homesickness and worry, all the days she had denied her mother’s diagnosis, the inevitability of her condition . . . and now, the great exhaustion of traveling cross-country on a shoestring, only to arrive at this funeral home with this sad old man, who offered such paltry consolation.

  She collapsed into the thick carpeting of the funeral home, weeping uncontrollably. Too late, too late, too late, she thought. I’m too late, and they are gone. Gone, gone, gone—forever gone. The old man knelt and gathered her into his arms, brushing hair away from her tear-streaked face.

  “Oh, darling,” he said. “Oh, sweetheart.”

  They stayed that way for a long time, her body shuddering while she released her sorrow, and the mortician said not a word, simply humming “I’ll Fly Away.”

  When she finally wiped the tears away from her face, and they stood up, his warm hands on her shoulders, he said, “You must be hungry.”

  She nodded, could not recall the last meal she’d eaten.

  “Please,” he offered, “let me buy you supper.”

  At a small café in downtown Jackson, the mortician sipped from a cup of black coffee and watched her circulate a spoon through a bowl of chicken noodle soup.

  “Do you have siblings?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Aunts and uncles?”

  “I haven’t had time to tell anyone.”

  “Shall I arrange a funeral?”

  The spoon fell out of her hand, and she covered her eyes.

  “I will handle it all,” he said, as a waitress arrived at the table, handing her a fresh white napkin with which to wipe her face.

  When she had suitably settled down, she took a long drink of water and peered out the window at the failing early-evening light.

  “I have a favor to ask you,” she said.

  “Anything,” he sighed.

  * * *

  —

  She slept that night in a small roadside motel and in the morning, the undertaker arrived, loading her two bags lovingly into the trunk of his pristine black Cadillac. Stretching to buckle herself in the passenger seat, she peered over her shoulder into the expansive backseat, where she saw a cardboard box carrying her parents’ urns and, on the floor, a long-handled shovel. They drove out to the property in silence, and upon reaching the cattle-gate that marked the entry to those hallowed acres, he placed the automobile into park.

  “Your supplies ought to be here soon,” he said quietly, then, “You’re sure you don’t need any help? I could ride up there with you? Make sure you get settled in.”

  “No,” she said, “you’ve done enough already.”

  They sat in silence, watching the sun break over those eastern peaks, illuminating the sagebrush and grasses of the meadows before them. Minutes passed before she heard the sound of another vehicle pull in behind them.

  Loney Wilkins slung out of the cab of a truck in cowboy boots, Wrangler blue jeans, a chambray shirt, and a barn jacket. His shoulders slumped, as if he expected to be scolded, but she was relieved to see him just the same.

  “I called him up last night,” the mortician said, “just like you wanted. I didn’t realize you two were acquainted.”

  She slid out of the car, then opened the back door and collected the shovel and box of urns.

  “I’m sorry about your parents,” Loney said, removing his cowboy hat and looking at her dolefully.

  “We ought to get moving,” she replied. “It’ll be dark soon.”

  “They were always very good to me, and my uncle,” Loney said. “Christ, he woulda been all broke-up about this.”

  The mortician stood beside the open trunk, her two bags of clothing and toiletries sitting on the gravel.

  “Well,” he drawled, “you need anything, anything at all, you come find me.”

  They watched the mortician drive off, and then they went about the work of saddling their horses and packing supplies.

  The ride up into the mountains was quiet, and at the hot springs, they carried her effects into the little cabin before building a small cook-fire outside.

  “My wife sent along some chili and corn bread,” Loney offered. “Why don’t I get some heated up.”


  “I’m not hungry,” she replied, thinking, For your wife’s cooking.

  “You have to eat something, Gretch. You look exhausted.”

  She turned on him. “I loved you,” she said. “I was in love with you, and you ruined everything.”

  He was silent just then, and the canyon was very quiet, only the small popping sounds of their campfire.

  “Don’t you even have anything to say for yourself?” she demanded.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last, though there was so much he might have added, so much he wanted to tell her, to share with her: the stress of being a young parent, the adoration his uncle Samuel had for her, the many nights he imagined another path for his life, moving out to New York City to find whatever work he might in the hopes of supporting her. . . . Now, standing on the other side of the flames from her, he saw the fire kindling her eyes with rage and sorrow.

  “I don’t want to see you again, after tomorrow,” she declared. “Take your horses and get out of here, and don’t come back.”

  “I’ll help you bury them,” he said. “Allow me that much. More than one person should know where they’re buried. ’Sides, I can help you carry everything.”

  She remained quiet while she recognized the wisdom in his words. The last thing she wanted to do was desecrate their remains in an ill-conceived funeral.

  “Fine,” she allowed. “Tomorrow morning.”

  * * *

  —

  Just after dawn, they rode over the river and up into an alpine meadow. Every hundred yards or so, she would turn in her saddle to look back toward the springs, and though he was curious, he did not ask any questions. They rode until the sun was nearly directly overhead in the sky, and then, after peering back to see the steam of the springs rising softly against the stone backdrop of the mountain , she dismounted into a small patch of wildflowers.

  “Here,” she declared. “We once had a picnic up here.”

  She dug the shovel into the rocky, unyielding soil, uprooting a few pasqueflowers and some hardy grass. He watched her from off to the side.

  “This is a good place,” he said. “They’ll have a good view.”

  She was already sweating from the effort of digging, and after their long ride.

  “It might have been a blessing,” she said. “She’d been battling so long, and . . . I can’t imagine my dad living without her.”

  She stopped digging and leaned on the shovel. “You want to help?” she asked.

  He straightened right up, walking toward her with an arm reaching for that shovel.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll dig the hole myself. But we’re going to need two stones. Or at least two cairns. Can you start collecting rocks?”

  He smiled, slid on a pair of calfskin gloves, and got to work.

  Several hours later, with the sun sliding toward the mountains, they finished stacking the cairns that would mark her parents’ graves. Both of them caked in dirt, streaked with sweat, and sunburned. She turned to glance toward the springs, then began searching their saddlebags, riffling through his effects.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “I’ll know when I find it,” she replied.

  “Can I help?”

  She relented. “Something reflective.” She motioned back toward the hot springs. “I want to be able to see them.”

  They settled on two objects, one for each cairn: Loney’s belt buckle for her father’s grave and his small shaving mirror for her mother’s. They aimed those objects in the rough direction of the hot springs.

  “If we were gonna do this right,” Loney said, “we’d have walkie-talkies, and you’d be back at the springs, telling me when I got the angle just right.”

  “This will have to do,” she said. “I’ll come back. Maybe stack some quartz on top of their cairns.”

  She dusted off her hands.

  “Thank you, Loney,” she said.

  “I’m just so sorry for you,” he replied. “I really am. I’m sorry about everything. About the way things turned out.”

  She peered down at her boots.

  “Let’s get back,” she could only say simply.

  They rode down into the valley, and she turned to glance over her shoulder just once, as if leaving behind all the happiness she had ever known.

  * * *

  —

  For the next several years, she returned to the hot springs, backpacking alone all the way from the county highway up to their spare little cabin, where she sat in desolate mourning, struggling to untangle herself—who she was and what it was she valued. She was alone now, a sobering thought. She had relatives, yes, but they were scattered across the country, folks who came into her life only for a matter of days at a time, at family reunions or the rare holiday. No, the only thing she had left in the world was this land.

  Every summer she rode up to those two cairns, decorating their graves with bouquets of wildflowers—monkshood, aster, windflower—and leaving some bright and shining object on their cairns, some memento from her parents’ lives: a piece of her mother’s jewelry, her father’s straightedge razor, some rock they’d collected from a trip, a handful of coins, or a pair of glasses.

  For the next twenty-odd years, she went there at least twice a year—in the summer, backpacking up to the old log cabin, and in winter, skiing the nearby mountains—until three years earlier, when she discovered the log cabin had burned down, likely the result of a lightning strike. And she determined then to build something that would endure, a house to enshrine the memories of her parents, of Samuel Wilkins, and all those wondrous days in these mountains. This was who she was. She felt confident of that now.

  22

  Cole woke in the early morning to the sound of retching and stumbled toward the bathroom to find Bart wrapped around the toilet, a bedsheet draped over his shoulders, his skin sickly pale and shining with sweat.

  “I’m really hurtin’,” he groaned.

  “What do I do?” Cole asked.

  “Call Jerry. Get him down here.”

  “I don’t know how this works, Bart,” Cole said. “I’ve never used meth before. You can’t just, you know, kick the stuff cold turkey?”

  Bart began chuckling until the laughter became violent coughing, then more heaving.

  Cole frowned in horror. “All right, I’ll call Jerry.”

  An hour later the dealer knocked on the door. Brushing past Cole, he slipped into the suite like a specter, a black nylon gym bag slung behind him. Bart had cleaned himself up by then and was nonchalantly watching the third stringers of early-morning cable news, his hands folded across his flat stomach. Only his feet were in motion, tapping at the thick carpeting like he was keeping time to his own tortured heartbeat. Jerry sat down in an overstuffed chair beside him.

  “Anyone gonna offer me a drink?” he groused.

  Without asking what he preferred, Cole riffled through the minibar and poured a small bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue over a glassful of ice cubes, then passed it over to Jerry.

  “You assholes do know I don’t generally make house calls,” Jerry said, tossing back the whisky and holding the glass out for Cole to refill. “I ain’t a damn physician. And this hotel, by the way, fucking hates me. I had a client check in here, but, uh . . . well, you get the picture. Nineteen years old. Pretty young thing, too.”

  “We need two ounces,” Bart said, even as his feet hopped around the carpet.

  “Two ounces, huh,” Jerry said. “So it’s damn the torpedoes, then?”

  He searched around through his bag and produced two plastic bags, tossing them at Bart.

  “This is the best stuff I’ve seen in a while,” he pronounced. “There’s a lot of Mexican garbage floating around right now. Shipped across the border in gasoline tanks and then reconstituted. I never liked that idea. This shit is cooked right
here in the U-S-of-A. Some fellas I know north of Vegas. They don’t put none of that food coloring in it neither, or any of that other bullshit to dress it up. Pure as pure.”

  “We’ll take it,” Bart said, nodding at Cole, who passed him a roll of cash. “Two other things. I lost my pipe. You think you can get me another? Oh, and we need a little coke, too. Maybe a coupla eight balls.”

  “Anything else?” Jerry asked, rooting around in his pharmacopeia for the cocaine. “Want me to pick up some groceries? Get you boys some ice cream cones, maybe?”

  “Fuck you, Jerry,” Bart replied coldly, and then, perhaps to remind the older man of his still imposing physique and his formidable bar-fighting record. “Come January, I’m sure as shit gonna dry out and kick this stuff. We’re almost there.”

  “I’m gonna level with you, Bart,” Jerry said. “You don’t look like you’re gonna make it, bub. You look like a zombie, is what you look like. I told you that house was a bad, bad idea. But guess what?”

  “What?” Bart said.

  “Nobody comes to their dealer for advice, now, do they?”

  With that, Jerry patted the armrests of the chair and stood, pushing the cash deep into the wells of his pockets. “Also, this may come as a surprise to you,” he said, “but I don’t have an inventory of fucking crank pipes on hand. Might take me a day. I’ll bring it by tomorrow around lunch.”

  On his way out the door, Jerry reached into the mini fridge and grabbed a handful of bottles, cramming them into his gym bag as well.

  “Vaya con dios, amigos,” the dealer said before leaving.

  Bart and Cole sat for some time in the half-dark of the suite, the television’s volume on low, Cole peering at the translucent crystals of meth like they were shattered treasure.

  “I’ve never tried meth,” Cole said at last.

  Bart shook his head wearily. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t if I was you.”

  “You think we’ll finish on time?” Cole asked.

  “I do,” Bart said quietly.