by Larry Watson
EAST OF BILLINGS, Montana, on a summer afternoon, a dusty black 1995 Chevy Blazer speeds along Interstate 94, the speedometer steady at eighty miles per hour. Inside, the stereo’s bass is booming so loudly it seems part of the car’s system of propulsion.
Billy Norris wears a T-shirt with a red-and-orange Back Avenue Brewery logo on the chest. The sleeves of the shirt have been cut off, revealing his narrow shoulders. His hair hangs almost to his shoulders, and he curls loose strands back behind his ears. When he nods in time to the beat, he bites down on his lower lip and reveals a gap between his front teeth.
On the seat next to him, Lauren Keller has her bare feet up on the dashboard, and the hem of her sundress has ridden up her thighs. She wears her hair in dreadlocks that look like tightly twisted coils of hay. A tiny sparkling stone pierces the wing of one nostril. She fans her face, though the air conditioner is on its coolest setting.
Jesse Norris in the back seat is playing a game on his phone. He’s a bigger, more muscular version of the driver, but the family resemblance is there—the long neck, the heavy brow, the hooded eyes, the shoulder-length hair.
“For Christ’s sake,” he says to Billy, “can you turn that shit off?”
“This is Jay-Z, man. Kingdom Come.”
“And what the fuck has either got to do with you?”
Billy raises his middle finger and turns the ear-thudding volume even higher. “Just because you don’t like any music that’s not about a hundred years old.”
Lauren sits up quickly and pulls the hem of her dress down as if she could be assaulted by sound. “Jesus! Billy! What the fuck!”
Billy smiles and shouts, “Hear it okay back there?”
Jesse reaches forward and slaps him lightly on the head. “I hope you go deaf. Asshole.”
Lauren turns the volume down to a barely audible level. “How much further?” she asks. “I have to pee.”
“To Gladstone? Too far for you to hold it, that’s for sure.”
“Then you need to stop.”
“How about if I just pull over?”
“Just pull off at the next town. Or rest area.”
“This part of the world,” Jesse says, “that might be a hundred miles or more.”
Billy twists around. “And when we stop,” he says, “we’ll maybe get out and I’ll fuck you up good.”
Jesse laughs. “You going to go all Jay-Z on me? Come on back here, little brother. I would love that. I would fucking love that.”
Lauren claps her hands over her ears. “Oh my God! What’s with you two? You’re driving me crazy!”
For miles then they travel without speaking. The snow-streaked mountains are far behind them, and they’re making good time across the sunbaked prairie, mile after mile of tawny rangeland and rolling grassy hills that barely blush green. The occasional clumps of stunted trees and random eruptions of rock look like mistakes in this landscape. The flat-topped distant buttes rise only so high and then stop abruptly.
Billy points to a roadside sign. “Look! Pompeys Pillar. Remember, Jess? Dad was always promising we’d stop there.”
“Threatening, more like,” Jesse says.
“But we never did. That’s where Lewiston Clark wrote his name on a rock. Or carved his initials or something.”
“Lewis and Clark,” says Jesse. “Not Lewiston. Jesus.”
“Whatever. What do you think? We should stop, right? Like Dad never did.”
“Keep going,” Jesse says. “It’s nothing special. Just a man’s name on a rock.”
EDIE IS OUT on the balcony when a Chevy Blazer pulls into the lot, its muffler rattling.
The girl is the first one out of the car, followed by two young men. She grabs the top of the open door and stretches like a cat. She pulls at the ropes of hair that fall from her scalp in every direction. She adjusts the straps of her sundress higher on her shoulders and smooths the fabric. Lauren Keller. Who else could it be?
Edie doesn’t call out to them, though her voice would surely carry that distance. She doesn’t wave either, though the taller of the two young men, the one who climbed out of the back seat, is looking in her direction. She goes back into her apartment and waits for the young woman who bears little resemblance to any of the photographs in the envelope.
“I WASN’T SURE when you’d get here,” Edie says, “so I fixed a salad, and I thought I’d heat up a couple frozen pizzas. Does that sound okay?”
Lauren asks apologetically, “Does the pizza have meat, Grandma? I’m trying not to eat meat.”
“One’s cheese and one’s sausage. How will that be?”
“Great!” Billy says. “Sausage for me.”
“I’ll eat either,” says Jesse.
“How about something to drink? I have iced tea, Sprite, Diet Coke, and Miller Lite.”
In one voice they all ask for beer.
“Are you sure?” Edie asks her granddaughter. “Beer?”
“I’m sure, Grandma.”
Edie brings the beers and sets them on the coffee table, then stands back and looks at the trio as if she’s trying to solve a puzzle.
All three are sitting on the sofa, with Lauren in the middle. She and Billy are the couple, aren’t they? They seem closest in age. Both of them call her Laure and glance furtively in her direction when one of the straps slips from her shoulder. How do they know to look just then? It’s not as though that narrow strip of cloth sliding across flesh makes a sound. And it’s not as though its fall reveals anything.
Some puzzles resist solving however, and Edie excuses herself. “I’ll put those pizzas in.”
In the kitchen she calls Rita.
“That bedroom you offered?” Edie says. “I might take you up on that. I’ve got an extra one here. The boyfriend has a brother.”
“Ho-ho! The brother—we know how that goes! History repeats itself, down through the generations!” Then Rita quickly adds, “Okay. Uncalled for. Sorry. Sorry. Well, I’ll warn George and get the bedroom ready.”
“I haven’t even offered yet. They might not—”
“I’ll put the just-in-case sheets on then. Just in case.”
JESSE LOOKS AROUND the room the way a prospective tenant might, appraising the navy blue armchair, the glass-topped coffee table with its copy of People magazine and the wet rings from the beer cans, the wooden end tables and the matching brass lamps. Except for the rocking chair with the sagging cane seat, this could be the waiting room in a doctor or lawyer’s office.
Billy stands and moves toward the television set. “Do you think your granny’d mind if I turned on the TV?”
Lauren wrinkles her nose. “Don’t call her a granny.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Just don’t.”
“Because she looks like a old stripper and not like a granny?”
“Hey, you can’t—”
Before she can finish, Jesse interrupts with a question to his brother. “Did you hear Derek’s old man caught him looking at porn? And get this. He was looking at one of those MILF sites.”
“What’d his dad say?”
“It was what Derek said to his old man. He told him there was a site like that for grandmothers too. ‘Is that your thing, Dad,’ he said. ‘Because I’ll show you how to find ’em.’”
Billy shakes his head. “He’s going to kick Derek’s ass out on the street again.”
“Your granny I bet could be on one of those sites,” Jesse says to Lauren. “You think she’d fuck somebody in front of a camera? She could make a shitload of money.”
Lauren puts her hands over her ears just as she did in the car. “My God,” she says and jumps to her feet. “I can’t believe it! You two are sick, you know that? Sick!” She hurries out of the room to the sound of the brothers’ laughter.
“DO YOU NEED any help, Grandma?” Lauren asks. She stands in the doorway with her head turned to the side as if she’s trying to determine whether her grandmother could have heard what Billy and Jesse sa
id.
“Frozen pizza, honey. Not much to do. Maybe get the salad out of the fridge?”
“Billy won’t want any. He’s not much for vegetables.”
“While you’re here,” Edie says to her granddaughter, “would you like to go with me to see . . . Well, I’m not sure what she’d be to you. She was my mother-in-law. Mrs. Linderman. From my first marriage. I try to look in on her every few days.”
Lauren doesn’t say no but her features pucker.
Edie quickly says, “If you’d rather not . . .”
“She’s old?” Lauren says.
“Well, yes. She’s in her nineties. And her health is not good. She’s in a nursing home.”
“I don’t do too good with old people,” Lauren says. “Especially if they’re sick.”
“I understand,” Edie says and smiles. “Your mother said something like that when we made a trip here. She was about your age.”
“Do you think we’re a lot alike, my mom and me?”
What can Edie say? “I hope not”? Or “It’s too soon to say”? She steps over to the stove and opens the oven door. “Could you take a look at these for me? I can never tell when they’re done.”
Lauren walks across the room and bends over to look inside the oven.
“Careful she don’t push you in,” a voice says, and both women turn quickly to see Jesse standing in the doorway.
Lauren closes the oven door and says, “They’re not ready. I’d give them a couple more minutes.”
“You need any help?” Jesse asks.
“Like I told Lauren,” says Edie, “not much to do with frozen pizza.”
Jesse sits down at the table. “Billy’s a goner,” he says, nodding in the direction of his brother in the living room. “He found that Callahan program. Man, he can’t get enough of that damn family.”
“I don’t believe I’m familiar with the program,” Edie says. “But I get so many channels I don’t know most of what’s on.”
“It’s like a reality show,” Lauren says. “Calling the Callahans. About this family that lived in California, but then the mom got divorced and they had to move to Chicago, where her relatives are. And she’s got twin daughters—”
“Hot daughters,” Jesse interjects.
Lauren gives him a dirty look and goes on. “And the family just gets settled when the dad comes back, and he wants to get back together with the mom. And she’s not sure . . . Anyway. Billy loves that program.”
“He wishes they’d adopt him,” Jesse says. “Especially with those twins—”
“It’s the mom,” Lauren says, shaking her head. “What’s her name? He’s got the hots for the mom.”
“Maggie,” says Jesse. “She used to be a movie star or something.”
“Yeah. Maggie. It’s fucking pathetic. Sorry, Grandma.”
“Nothing I haven’t heard before, honey.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the family thing,” Jesse says. Then to Edie he explains, “We had a pretty crazy family life. Really unstable. So Billy likes to watch other families. See if he can figure out what makes them happy.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Edie says. “About your family, I mean.”
“Hey, it was what it was. One year we moved around so much Billy missed a whole year of school. From Pocatello to Great Falls and then back again. Mom’s folks to Dad’s. Then to Mom’s sister’s in Miles City. Then back to Pocatello. All the way out to Oregon once. Then back to Montana. That’s how come I know the road well as I do.”
“All that moving,” Edie says. “Weren’t you affected?”
Jesse smiles as if she came close to a truth but missed it. “I was older, so I didn’t have the needs Billy had. Now I get all fidgety if I stay in one place too long.”
“Bismarck,” Lauren says, “is where we’re headed next. They’ve got cousins there.”
“It’ll be old home week,” says Jesse.
Edie turns to Lauren. “You didn’t say how your visit with your father went.”
“Speaking of fucked-up families, you mean?”
Edie flinches in surprise at how quick and sharp this teenager’s tongue can be. “That’s not what I meant, honey. I’m sorry if it came out that way.”
Lauren is looking in the oven again. “These are done,” she says. “What should I put them on?”
Edie takes two dinner plates down from the cupboard and holds each in turn while Lauren uses a fork to slide out first one pizza and then the other. The smells of tomato sauce, sausage, and burnt crust rush into the room.
“We couldn’t find him,” she says to Edie. “My dad.”
“Which was weird,” Jesse adds, “because I’m usually pretty damn good at finding people. But if a man doesn’t want to be found, those Idaho mountains are a good place to stay lost.”
Lauren says, “Daddy always had this dream of heading for the wilderness so he could live off the land. He wanted to build his own cabin. Hunt and fish for his food. No electricity. No telephone. Just getting by on his survival skills, he said.”
“His skills,” Jesse says, “and what he could make from cooking and selling meth.”
Although she’s on the other side of the kitchen, Lauren aims a listless kick in Jesse’s direction. “Don’t say that. You don’t know that. Not for sure.”
Jesse turns up his palms. “Lots of ways to survive, Laure.” To Edie he says, “Some folks on the mountain told us somebody was running a meth lab. She just doesn’t want to think that could be dear old dad.”
“It could have been anybody,” Lauren says.
Billy appears in the kitchen doorway. He points to the plates of pizza. “I thought I smelled food.”
“How’s the Callahan family?” his brother asks him. “Chrissy and Carly and the whole crew?”
“Chris is maybe getting engaged.”
Lauren has drawn a bread knife from the wooden block on the counter. “I’ll just cut these in fourths, okay?”
No one objects, and no sooner has she sliced the pizzas into eight equal portions than Billy takes a piece and begins to eat.
“Hey,” Jesse says to his brother, “manners. Sit down.”
“Pizza ain’t a sit-down supper.”
“It is when this lady goes to all the trouble to fix it for you and set out a nice table.”
Once Billy sits down, Jesse says, “Let’s bow our heads, and I’ll say a couple words before we dig in. I’m sure the Lord can get past that big bite Billy already took out of his pizza.” He reaches out, and the others understand what he is asking for and they join hands.
All heads are lowered, and all eyes are closed as Jesse begins a prayer. “Thank you, Lord Jesus, for this good food set before us and for the good company we find ourselves among . . .”
Edie and her granddaughter both lift their heads and open their eyes.
“ . . . and for this kind lady opening the door to us, strangers who have traveled these many miles.”
They look in each other’s direction, and in an instant an understanding seems to declare itself in their interlocked gaze.
EDIE AND HER granddaughter rise in unison to begin clearing the table.
Jesse stands and pushes his chair back under the table. “That sure hit the spot, Mrs. Dunn. Thank you. Now if you ladies will excuse me, I’m going to unload the car.”
Jesse taps Billy on the arm. “On your feet, soldier. I’m not lugging everything up here by myself.”
Billy scrambles to his feet and heads for the door.
“Forgetting something?” Jesse asks his brother.
“What? Oh. Thanks for the supper, ma’am. What kind of pizza was that anyway?”
“You mean the brand?” Edie asks. “I’m not sure. Giovanni’s, I think.”
“Well, ma’am,” Billy says with his gap-toothed smile, “that’s going to be the pizza for me from here on out.”
Once the brothers are out the door, Edie says, “‘Ma’am.’ I’m still not used to being a ma’am.”
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“Their dad really tried hard to bring them up with like good manners. But he wasn’t around all that much, so . . .”
“Oh, I’m not complaining about their manners. I just meant . . . Never mind. But the first time a young man calls you ma’am, you’ll know.”
Lauren begins to search the cupboards. “Grandma, what else do you have to eat? When Jesse and Billy come back in they’ll probably be hungrier than when they went out.”
Edie looks at her quizzically and then says, “I have some chocolate chip cookies. Store-bought. And there are homemade blueberry muffins I thought we’d have for breakfast. But are you sure? They ate almost a whole pizza each.”
Lauren finds the package of cookies and puts it on the counter. “You can say good-bye to these,” she says. “They’ll be smoking for sure out there.”
“Smoking?”
Lauren pinches her thumb and index finger together and raises them to her lips. She inhales as if she’s sipping through a straw. “You know,” she says. “Smoking? Like weed? Marijuana? Makes you hungry?”
Comprehension crosses Edie’s face like sunlight. “Oh. Oh! You must think your grandmother is completely out of it.”
“No, ma’am,” Lauren says, and the two of them burst into laughter.
