by Larry Watson
Roy tries again. “Edie, Bunny!” He signals for them to come over to the booth, but they continue to ignore him. But his shouts have gotten the attention of other customers. Ike and Farley Rose, co-owners of Rose’s Ace Hardware, sit at the opposite end of the bar from Edie and Bunny, and the Rose brothers can’t seem to decide whether to keep their eyes on the women or the Linderman twin who’s waving his arms like a drowning man. At another booth are a nicely dressed couple, he in a dark suit and she in a skirt and blouse. They’re strangers in Gladstone, in town perhaps to take a deposition in a lawsuit or to buy up mineral leases, and they wear expressions of annoyance and disapproval, as if a contract has been broken—the Elk’s Tooth is where you go for a quiet drink.
Of course the women have heard Roy. Of course they understand what he wants them to do even though he doesn’t say it—“Pick up your drinks and walk over here!”
Edie slides off her stool and readjusts her too-tight dress. But then she heads in the opposite direction, toward the jukebox. She leans on its big bright belly and stares at the selections. She turns to Bunny to ask, “How about—?”
“I told you,” Bunny says. “You decide.”
Edie drops her coin in. She punches the buttons. E-7. C-17. D-4. The machine hums and clicks, and rows of lights blink in sequence. The mechanical arm finds the first record and places it on a turntable. And when its first jangling chords begin to play, the women just stare at each other. Then—“Don’t you want somebody to love”—the women begin to laugh.
Edie returns to the bar, where her Seven and Seven waits. She finishes it with one long swallow, and Bunny does the same with hers. Then Edie reaches out to her friend. In the next moment the women are dancing in front of the bar. They swivel and slide and shimmy a few feet apart, their eyes only half open, alone with the music.
Roy hurries over to the women, clapping his hands not quite in rhythm to the music. Jerry Krueger follows close behind, but Dean remains at the booth, hunched over his whiskey.
When Bunny spins close to Roy, he taps her on the shoulder and says, “Do you mind if I cut in?”
Edie shakes her head no at him and scolds him with a waggle of her finger.
The record stops, but the women don’t return to their bar stools. They continue to sway in time to an echo only they can hear. Then Edie’s next selection begins. “Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane . . .”
Loretta says to Jerry Krueger, who’s standing by the bar waiting for the show to resume, “Don’t blame me. They come in like this.”
And they’re off, gyrating harder and faster than before, as if obeying an impulse apart from the song’s rhythm.
“Jesus Christ, Bunny,” Jerry says. “Where’d you learn to dance like that?”
The song ends and before the third song starts—the jukebox clicks and hums once again—Dean rises quickly from the booth and walks determinedly to the bar.
“Come on,” he says, taking Edie roughly by the hand. “We’re going home.”
She shakes free of his grip. “I was home,” she answers. “And you weren’t.”
Dean grabs Edie’s coat and holds it for her but says nothing.
“It’s all right for you to go out to a bar every night?” Edie says. Then she looks at Bunny and adds, “You and Russell?”
“Fine,” Dean says. He drops her coat back on the bar stool.
Edie watches him walk away, but before he reaches the door, she says, “Oh hell.”
She grabs her coat and catches up to him just in time for them to walk out together into the winter wind.
IN THEIR WALK toward the bakery, Dean and Edie pass Montgomery Ward, and though his wife is beside him, Dean slows and looks intently through the glass as if he were trying to see the teenage Edie working there. “Am I correct,” he says, “the Elk’s Tooth wasn’t your first stop tonight?”
“We tried the Silver Dollar first. Bunny thought Russell and his buddies might be there.”
“You put on a show there too?”
“Not really. We just had a drink.”
“Hell, that dress is a show all by itself,” says Dean.
“We were looking for you, you know. You and Russell. Bunny and I have both had some trouble lately getting our husbands’ attention, so we thought we’d try a different approach.”
“And do you think Bunny’s still trying?”
“I feel bad about that,” says Edie. “Leaving her there. We were doing this together. It was supposed to be fun. And funny.”
“She won’t be lonely,” Dean says. “Not with Roy there. Where’d the wig come from, by the way?”
“Bunny’s sister,” Edie replies. “Both of them. She and her husband are visiting from California, and she left most of her stuff at Russ and Bunny’s. Said she didn’t want her mother to see the wigs. She’s got two more. Black ones.”
“But you decided to go with the blond . . . And how about the dress?”
“Bunny’s. It’s old. But she said it would still work.”
“I forget—has Bunny always been a whore?”
“Dean! My God! Why would you say that? Because she . . . ? Jesus. What if someone said that about me tonight?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” he says.
Edie stops on the sidewalk and turns on Dean, her eyes flaring with anger. “I told you,” she says, “we were trying to get your attention. Men are always looking at women who look like that . . . Well, we decided to look like that. But now you need to tell me: What made you so mad—the way I looked? Or the way men looked at me?”
Dean doesn’t say anything. Edie shakes her head in frustration and then starts to walk again.
After a few steps she stops again. She turns back to Dean, who has lagged behind.
“And if Bunny and I want to go to a bar,” Edie says, “we have a perfect right. And if we want to dance, we can dance to our fucking hearts’ content.”
Dean’s jaw has stiffened with the cold, and he has to work hard to get the words out. “I’ve never blamed you,” he says, “for men noticing you.”
“Well. Thank you for that at least.” She leans into the wind and keeps walking.
They enter the alley behind the bakery, and when they come to the stairs that lead up to their apartment, Dean says, “Careful, there’s still a little ice there. I have to chip that away one of these days.”
Edie is first to step inside, and she switches on a light. Almost immediately Dean slaps the switch and the light goes off.
Dean shrugs out of his jacket before helping Edie remove her coat. He lets her coat drop to the floor, and while she still has her back to him, he unzips the red dress and tries to push it off her shoulders but it’s too tight to slip off easily. Then he unclasps her brassiere. In defiance of the frigid night, Edie’s bare back gives off heat and the faint scent of perfume. Soon Dean is pushing her across the room and bending her over the back of the couch. He seems uncertain—should he keep trying to slide the dress off her shoulders or reach down and lift up the hem? But even in his uncertainty he keeps pushing, pushing, as if his desire has its own momentum that can’t be resisted. Edie tries to reach back, tries to find a way to be involved in what’s happening, groping helplessly for her husband, but her arms are still caught in the dress. Dean runs his fingers up the dark groove of Edie’s spine, and when he reaches her neck he grabs the wig and throws it across the room. For an instant the blond filaments seem to lift like the feathers of a bird’s wing, but then the wig falls behind the television.
The act finished, Edie stands up and turns around to face her husband. She seldom wears mascara, but tonight she layered it on thickly, and when she wipes at her tears now, she smears her cheeks with black. Her lips tremble with the effort to speak.
“I guess that approach worked then, didn’t it?”
She walks away, tugging her borrowed dress back onto her shoulders.
TWO NIGHTS LATER Bunny calls. The wig. Bunny’s sister needs her wig back.
Although Ed
ie searches everywhere, she can’t find it. Dean ripped it from her head in the living room, but it doesn’t seem to be there, so she tries the bedroom, the bathroom, even the kitchen.
Finally she asks Dean if he knows where it is.
He’s eating another one of his TV dinners. Fried chicken.
“How would I know?” he says.
“You seemed to like it,” Edie replies. She knows this remark is likely to anger him, but she doesn’t care. She’s tired of having to step quietly around his feelings; an angry Dean would be preferable to the sullen, silent version that she’s had entirely too much of lately.
“Maybe you tucked it away somewhere,” she says. “So you could pull it out when you need the help.”
Dean slams his fork down. The aluminum tray of food jumps and skitters on the tabletop. When he stands he pushes his chair back with such force it topples to the floor. With his fists clenched he lunges toward her. Edie flinches, but she doesn’t cower. She stares defiantly at him.
Dean pushes past her, and once he’s in the living room he yanks the cushions off the couch and pushes magazines off the coffee table. It looks as though he’s about to kick over the TV tray that the television rests on when he stops. There, on the plastic-coated wire that leads from the rabbit ears antenna to the connection at the back of the television set, is the wig, hanging so precariously it’s surprising that any vibration in the room didn’t send it sliding to the floor.
He throws the wig at Edie, but it has so little weight it flutters uselessly to the carpet between them. Edie scoops up the wig. She grabs her coat from the hook and walks out of the apartment.
“I’m taking this to Bunny,” she says. “Don’t wait up.”
As she descends the stairs, she wonders what ignited in Dean’s mind when he charged at her. Did he intend to strike her? He never has, and she doesn’t believe he ever would. But does he know that?
How exhausting and bewildering it can be, Edie thinks, to live with someone you understand better than he understands himself.
EDIE DOESN’T COME home until after ten o’clock, her breath smelling of whiskey. She doesn’t offer any explanation, and Dean doesn’t ask for any. The cushions are back on the couch, and the magazines are stacked on the coffee table.
If Dean wanted to know where his wife has been, he might have returned to the Elk’s Tooth to make his inquiry. Loretta Sooner could tell him, yes, she was here. She sat right where she sat two nights ago, this time as a brunette however. She drank three Seven and Sevens, and she played the jukebox over and over. E-7, C-17, D-4. E-7, C-17, D-4. E-7, C-17, D-4. The only time she spoke was when a young cowboy approached her. He didn’t know her as anyone’s wife; to him she was just a pretty girl sitting alone at the bar. Loretta didn’t hear what Edie said to him, but as the cowboy walked away, he said, “Jesus Christ, lady. Why the hell would you go and say a thing like that?”
A WEEK LATER when Dean enters their apartment after his workday, he finds Edie sitting at the kitchen table, her coat on, an opened bottle of Budweiser in front of her.
“What’s going on?” he asks. “Is the heat off?”
Edie says, “I need to talk to you.” She quickly adds, “This is nothing for you to get mad about. I’m not mad. I’m . . . I don’t want us to fight, Dean. But we’ve hardly spoken ten words to each other for days.”
He pulls out a chair and sits down.
She pushes the beer toward him. “This is for you,” Edie says. “I opened it when I heard you on the stairs.” Then she smiles and leans across the table to reach toward him. “Let’s leave here,” she says. “Let’s move.”
Dean lifts up the beer bottle. “And go where?”
“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Just away. Away from here.”
“You don’t mean now.”
“We can give the landlord and the bank and the store a month’s notice. The car’s paid for. We’ve got a little money in the bank.” Edie sweeps her hand through the air to take in the entire apartment and its contents. “It won’t take much to pack up. And we can sell what doesn’t fit.”
“And go where,” he asks again. “It’s the middle of winter.”
“San Francisco? I read an article about how so many people are going there and—”
“Kids. Kids are going there. And living on the streets. Is that what you want?”
“It was just an idea. It doesn’t have to be California. Denver? Or we could go the other way. Minneapolis maybe. Or someplace smaller if you like. I don’t care. I just want to leave here. If we stay here, we’re not going to make it.”
He doesn’t say anything in response, but he draws a sharp intake of breath and sits up straighter.
“As long as we’re here,” she says, “you’ll always be one of the Linderman twins. I’ll always be Edie Pritchard. And we’ll always be—”
“I am one of the Linderman twins. No matter where I am.”
“I’m not saying this right. It’s just that as long as we’re here, we’ll keep living our lives in the same way. Please don’t look at me like that. Please say you understand.”
Dean finally drinks and puts the bottle back down on the table. “I can’t.”
“You can’t what? Leave? Of course you can—”
He’s shaking his head before Edie finishes speaking. “Not yet. I can’t leave yet. Not until I’m finished here.”
“Oh God. Don’t tell me. Is this about going to Bentrock? Is that what you mean?”
“It’s something I need to do.”
“You don’t. You don’t.”
“All right then,” says Dean. “It’s something I want to do. I want to be able to hold my head up in this town.”
“Have you heard anything I said? We can leave. This town doesn’t give a damn about you.”
If this remark wounds him, he gives no sign.
Edie slips her coat from her shoulders. She smiles and says, “I’ll dye my hair blond. What do you say? We can go someplace new and I can be a blonde.” She gives a nervous laugh before adding, “Or I can get a wig.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“You seemed to like me as a blonde.”
“I told you. Leave that be. Please.” There’s no anger in his words. He puts his head down as if he’s ashamed.
She tugs tentatively at the hair right behind her ear. “I’m trying to grow it long again.”
“You don’t have to do that for me.”
“I just thought . . . I don’t know. Long would be easier.”
“I liked it that way.” His voice has grown softer. “But I like it the way it is too.”
Edie reaches across the table again. She takes his hand in hers and squeezes it affectionately. But something in the pressure of her hand causes his mind—or his heart—to lurch in the wrong direction.
He stands abruptly and steps back from the table. “Is this about you and Roy?” he asks. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me? If I don’t get you away from here, you’ll end up with him?”
Edie’s head sinks to the tabletop. After a long moment she looks up at him. “Is that all you can think of? No. What I’m afraid of is that you’ll end up with him.”
A DIRT ROAD runs along the margin of one of the old Linderman pastures before winding its way up into the foothills, and in most winters it would be drifted over, accessible only by a tractor or a truck. But Dean has been able to drive the Volkswagen—the Volkswagen—out here with no more difficulty than if he were cruising down a highway on a summer day.
He gets out of the car and locks it. The morning is calm, but the leaden sky looks as though it’s about to close the lid on the day. Hoar frost clings to every stalk and stubble, giving the prairie the appearance of having grown white fur overnight.
Dean’s dressed for the cold in a knit cap, two sweatshirts, and sweatpants. In his mittened hand he holds the revolver.
No coach ever told Dean that the best way to train for distance running was to find a steep hill a
nd run up it as hard as he could, but that’s exactly what he did back in high school. This very hill. Over and over again.
Now he paws the bare, frozen ground as if he were waiting for the report of a starter’s pistol. Finally he takes off, not sprinting exactly, but pumping his feet, knees, and arms at a speed he can’t possibly sustain. At fifty yards his lungs feel as though they’re burning. Or freezing. Not that it matters. Whether his lungs are filled with ice or fire, they can no longer provide him with the oxygen he needs to keep moving up the hill.
After a moment of rest, Dean starts up again, this time at a slower pace that carries him farther but still leaves him short of the top of the hill. He rests again. Then he walks to the crest.
There the land levels out. Off to the right is a rocky outcropping that he and Roy used to call the Crooked Teeth. In the lee of those rocks is a little dip where cedar and chokecherry grow. A Linderman cow and her calf once got tangled up in that gully, and it took the better part of a day for their father and his sons to get the animals out.
There’s less frost at this elevation, but in that patch of dark vegetation a few branches and leaves still bristle with white outlines. Dean stands perhaps twenty yards from the tree with the thickest trunk. He takes off his mitten, assumes a shooter’s stance, and raises the pistol to eye level. Squeeze. That’s what shooters are advised to do, whether novice or experienced marksmen. Squ-ee-ee-ze. The gun jumps in Dean’s hand as if the weapon were a muscle that could suddenly contract. The bang—like the slamming of a heavy, hollow door—rolls out across the empty land.
He looks at the pistol as if it has betrayed him. Then, without seeming to aim or even care where a bullet will strike, he pulls the trigger five more times. He seems to be firing the gun for no other purpose than to empty it.
But he hits something. From that thicket of trees and bushes, a few knots of frost flutter down.
THE WIND IS howling tonight, ripping loose anything that isn’t latched, tied down, or too heavy for a gust to lift.
