Once the reverberation of the screen-door spring had ended, there was whispering. He perceived a dim shadow cross his face, someone peering down at him, and then another whisper. Soon their muffled copulation filled the room, then paused long enough for a window to be opened before resuming. Dave listened more and more intently, comfortable in his pretended sleep, until Morsel laughed, got up, and left with her clothes under her arm. “Night, Dave. Sweet dreams.”
The door shut, and after a moment, Ray spoke. “What could I do, Dave? She was after my weenie like a chicken after a June bug.” Snorts and, soon after, snoring.
* * *
—
In the doorway of the house, taking in the early sun and smoking a cigarette, was Morsel in an old flannel shirt over what looked like a body stocking that produced a lazily winking camel toe. As Dave stepped up, her eyes followed her father crossing the yard very slowly toward them. “Look,” she said, “he’s wetting his pants. When he ain’t wetting his pants, he walks pretty fast. It’s just something he enjoys.”
Weldon came up and looked at Dave, trying to remember him. He said, “This ain’t much of a place to live. My folks moved us out here. We had a nice little ranch at Coal Banks Landing on the Missouri, but one day it fell in the river. Morsel, I’m uncomfortable.”
“Go inside, Daddy, I’ll get you a change.”
Once the door shut behind them, Dave said, “Why in the world do you let him fly that plane?”
“It’s all he knows. He flew in the war, and he’s dusted crops. He’ll probably kill himself in the damn thing. Good.”
“What’s he do up there?”
“Looks for his cows.”
“I didn’t know he had any.”
“He don’t. He hasn’t had cows in forever. But he looks for ’em long as he’s got fuel, then he comes down and says the damn things was brushed up to where you couldn’t see ’em.”
“I’m glad you go along with him. That’s sure thoughtful.”
“I don’t know about that, but I gotta tell you this: I can’t make heads or tails of your friend Ray. He was coming on to me the whole time at the cage fights, then he whips out a picture of his ex-wife and tells me she’s the greatest piece of ass he ever had.”
“Aw, gee. What’d you say to that?”
“I said, ‘Ray, she must’ve had one snappin’ pussy, because she’s got a face that would stop a clock.’ I punched him in the shoulder and told him he hadn’t seen nothing yet. What’d you say your name was?”
“I’m Dave.”
“Well, Dave, Ray says you mean to throw in with us. Is that a fact?”
“I’m sure giving it some thought.”
“You look like a team player to me. I guess that bitch he’s married to will help out on that end. Long as I never have to see her.”
Sometimes Dave could tell that Ray couldn’t remember his name either. He’d say “pal” or “pard” or, in a pinch, “old-timer,” which seemed especially strange to someone in his twenties. Then when the name came back to him, he’d overuse it. “Dave, what’re we gonna do today?” “Dave, what’s that you just put in your mouth?” “I had an uncle named Dave.” And so forth. But the morning that Morsel slipped out of their room carrying her clothes, he summoned it right away: “Dave, you at all interested in getting rich?”
“I’m doing my best, Ray!”
“I’m talking about taking it up a notch, and I’m fixing to run out of hints.”
“I’m a certified artificial inseminator,” said Dave, loftily. If he had not already scented the bait, he’d have been home days before. But this was a big step, and he knew it was a moment in time.
* * *
—
At least on the phone she couldn’t throw stuff at him.
“The phone is ringing off the hook. Your ranchers wanting to know when you’ll get there.”
“Ma, I know, but I been tied up. Tell them not to get their panties in a wad. I’ll be there.”
“David,” she screeched, “I’m not your secretary!”
“Ma, listen to me, Ma, I got tied up. I’m sparing you the details right now, but trust me.”
“How can I trust you with the phone ringing every ten seconds?”
“Ma, I can’t listen to this shit, I’m under pressure. Pull the fucking thing out of the wall.”
“Pressure? You’ve never been under pressure in your life!”
He hung up on her. He knew he couldn’t live with her anymore. She needed to take her pacemaker and get a room.
* * *
—
Morsel was able to get a custodial order in Miles City based on the danger to community presented by Weldon and his airplane. Ray had so much trouble muscling him into Morsel’s sedan for the ride to assisted living that Dave’s hulking frame had to be enlisted to bind Weldon, who tossed off some antique curses before collapsing in defeat. But the God he called down on them didn’t count for much anymore. At dinner that night, Morsel was still a little blue, despite the toasts, somewhat vague, to a limitless future. Dave smiled along with them, his inquiring looks met by giddy winks from Morsel and Ray. Nevertheless, he felt happy and accepted, at last convinced he was going somewhere. Exchanging a nod, they let him know that he was a “courier.” He smiled around the room in bafflement. Ray unwound one of his wads. Dave was going to California.
“Make sure you drive the limit,” said Ray. “I’ll meanwhile get to know the airplane. Take ’er down to the oil fields. Anyway, it’s important to know your customers.” He and Morsel saw him off from the front stoop. They looked like a real couple.
“Customers for what exactly?” Dave immediately regretted his question. Not a problem, as no one answered him anyway.
“And I’ll keep the home fires burning,” said Morsel without taking the cigarette from her mouth. Dave had a perfectly good idea what he might be going to California for and recognized the advantage of preserving his ignorance, no guiltier than the United States Postal Service. “Your Honor, I had no idea what was in the trunk and I am prepared to affirm that under oath or take a lie-detector test, at your discretion,” he rehearsed.
Dave drove straight through, or nearly so, stopping only briefly in Idaho, Utah, and Nevada to walk among cows. His manner with cattle was so familiar that none ran from him but gathered around in benign expectation. Dave sighed and jumped back in the car. He declined to be swayed by second thoughts.
It was late when he drove into Modesto, and he was tired. He checked into a Super 8 and awoke to the hot light of a California morning as it shone through the window onto his face. He ate downstairs and then checked out. The directions he unfolded in his car proved quite exact: within ten minutes he was pulling around the house into the side drive and backing in to the open garage.
A woman in a bathrobe emerged from the back door and walked past his window without a word. He popped the trunk and sat quietly as he heard her load then shut it. She stopped at his window, pulling the bathrobe up close around her throat. She wasn’t hard to look at, but Dave could see you wouldn’t want to argue with her. “Tell Ray I said be careful. I’ve heard from two IRS guys already.” Dave said nothing at all.
Dave was so cautious, the trip back took longer. He overnighted at the Garfield again so as to arrive in daylight, getting up twice during the night to check on the car. In the morning, he was reluctant to eat at the café, where some of his former clientele might be sitting around picking their teeth and speculating about fall calves or six-weight steers. He was now so close that he worried about everything from misreading the gas gauge to getting a flat. He even imagined the trunk flying open for no reason. He headed toward the ranch on an empty stomach, knowing Morsel would take care of that. He flew past fields of cattle with hardly a glance.
No one seemed around to offer the hearty greeting and meal he was counting on. On the wire running from the house to the bunkhouse, a hawk flew off reluctantly as though it had had the place to itself. Dave got out and wen
t into the house. Dirty dishes sat on the dining-room table, light from the television flickered without sound from the living room. When Dave walked in he saw the television was tuned to the shopping network, a close-up of a hand modeling a gold diamond-studded bracelet. Then he saw Morsel on the floor with the remote still in her hand.
Dave felt an icy calm. Ray had done this. Dave patted his pocket for the car keys and walked out of the house, stopping on the porch to survey everything in front of him. Then he went around to the shop. Where the airplane had usually been parked, in its two shallow ruts, Ray was lying with a pool of blood extending from his mouth like a speech balloon without words. He’d lost a shoe. The plane was gone.
Dave felt trapped between the two bodies, as if there was no safe way back to the car. When he got to it, a man was there waiting. He was about Dave’s age, lean and respectable looking in clean khakis and a Shale Services ball cap. “I must have overslept,” he said. “How long have you been here?” He touched his teeth with his thumbnail as he spoke.
“Oh, just a few minutes.”
“Keys.”
“Oh right, yes, I have them here.” Dave patted his pocket again.
“Get the trunk for me, please.” Dave offered him the keys. “No, you.”
“Not a problem.”
Dave bent to insert the key, but his hand was shaking so that at first he missed the lock. The lid rose to reveal the contents of the trunk. Dave never felt a thing.
AN OLD MAN WHO LIKED TO FISH
The Smiths were a very old couple, whose lifelong habits of exercise and outdoor living and careful diet had resulted in their seeming tiny—tiny, pale, and almost totemic—as they spread a picnic tablecloth on my front lawn and arranged their luncheon. Since I live with reckless inattention to what I eat, I watched with fascination as they set out apples, cheese, red wine, and the kind of artisanal bread that looks like something found in the road. The Smiths were the last friends of my parents still alive. And to the degree we spend our lives trying to understand our parents, I always looked forward to Edward and Diana’s visits as a pleasant forensic exercise.
Edward was a renowned fisherman, much admired by my father, and me, but given his present frailty, it was surprising that he thought he could still wade our rocky streams. He had a set rule of no wading staff before the first heart attack, and as he had yet to suffer one, he continued picking his way along, peering for rises, and if he ran into speedy water in a narrow place, he’d find a stick on the shore to help him through it. My father, by contrast, had always used a staff, an elegant blackthorn with a silver head that was supposed to have belonged to Calvin Coolidge.
Diana had been an avid golfer and considered fishing to be an inferior pursuit, with no score and thus no accountability. Furthermore, I feel sorry for the fish. She never followed Edward along the stream, instead taking up a place among the cottonwoods, where, with her binoculars, she quietly waited for something to happen in the canopy, hopeful of seeing a new bird for the list she kept in her head. She had done this for so many years that she felt empowered to report the rise and fall of entire species, extrapolating from her observations in the cottonwoods. This year she announced the decline of tanagers; last year, it was the rise of Audubon’s warblers. Lately, she would too often describe her sighting of Kirtland’s warbler, which occurred thirty years ago on Great Abaco. Not a good sign. At the last iteration, I must have looked blankly, because she said “wood warbler” in a sharp tone. Still, her birding represented mainly an accommodation of Edward, enabling her to stay close by while he fished, though he had never made a secret of his disdain for golf, golfers, and golf courses.
I fished with Edward for an hour or so, just to be sure that he could manage. He lovingly strung up his little straw-colored Paul Young rod, pulling line from the noisy old pewter-colored Hardy reel. Holding the rod at arm’s length, sighting down the length of it, he announced, “Not a set after forty years.” But I could see the leftward set from where I stood ten feet away. His casts, on the other hand, were straight as ever: tight, probing expressions of a tidy stream craft, such simplicity and precision. They took me all the way back to my boyhood, when from a high bank on the Pere Marquette, at my father’s urging, I had first observed Edward with utter rapture at seeing it all done so well. Now watching him hook an aerial cutthroat from a seam along cottonwood roots, I concluded he would be just fine on his own. He gave me a wink and cupped the fish in his hand, vital as a spark, before he let it go. I could see the fish dart around in the clear water, trying to find its direction before racing to midstream and disappearing. Edward held the barbless fly up to the light, blew it dry, and shot out a new cast. “I’m sorry your father isn’t here to enjoy this,” he said, keeping an eye on his fly as it bobbed down the current.
“So am I.”
“We had quite a river list. He was the last of the old gang, except for me and the wives.” Edward laughed. “The Big Fellow is starting to get the range.”
“My dad was a great fisherman, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, not really, but nobody loved it more.” My father and I hadn’t gotten along, so I was surprised to find myself feeling defensive about his prowess as a fisherman. But it was true: his style of aggression was ill suited to field sports. He had played football in college, and I could recall feeling that baseball, my sport, was a little too subtle for him. And slow.
Edward promised that when the sun got far enough to the west to put glare on the water, he’d head back up to the house, and meanwhile he hoped that I would be patient with Diana. She had begun to slip further, something that I had noticed but not much worried about, because she could still be talked out of the most peculiar of her fixations. I had seen the very old—my aunt Margaret, for example—slide into dementia good-naturedly, even enjoying some of its comic effects or treating the misapprehensions as amusing curiosities. But Diana demanded to be believed, and so perhaps her progression had not been so pleasant. Edward did say that they’d had to light the flower beds at home when she began to see things there that frightened her.
Edward said, “Well, I’m going to keep moving. I want to get to the logjam while there’s still good light.” He looked down at the bright water curling around his legs. “Amazing this all finds its way to the sea.”
Edward wasn’t seen again. That’s not quite accurate: his body turned up, what was left of it, in a city park in Billings, on the banks of the Yellowstone. It had gone down the West Fork of the Boulder; down the Boulder to the Yellowstone, past the town Captain Clark had named Big Timber for the cottonwoods on the banks; down the Yellowstone through sheep towns, cow towns, refinery towns; and finally to Two Moon Park in Billings, where it was found by a homeless man, Eldon Pomfret of Magnolia Springs, Alabama. In a sense, Edward had gotten off easy.
At sundown, Diana came out of her birding lair and asked, “Have you seen Edward?” She had binoculars in one hand and a birding book in the other, and her eyes were wide. I was still in the studio, and her inquiry startled me.
“Maybe he stayed for the evening rise or—”
“I wonder if you should go look for him. He doesn’t see well in the dark. It will be dark soon, won’t it? What time is it, anyway?”
“I don’t have my watch, but I’ll walk up and see how he’s getting along.”
“Don’t bother him if there are bugs on the water. He gets furious. What time did you say it was?”
“I left my watch on the dresser.”
“What difference does it make? We can tell by the sun.”
“Okay, here I go.”
“And if he’s intent, please don’t disturb him.”
“I won’t.”
“He gets furious.”
When I got back, I sat with Diana on the sun porch waiting for the sheriff. She was weeping. “He’s with that woman.”
“What woman, Diana?”
“The one with those huge hats. Francine. I thought that was over.”
I refrained f
rom noting that Edward would have had no means of conveyance to “Francine.” Perhaps, she knew more than I thought and was escaping into this story. As time went on, “Francine” came to seem something portentous. Diana hung on to the idea even after the sheriff arrived, who seemed to us old folks an overgrown child, bursting out of his uniform. He listened patiently as Diana explained all about Francine. He nodded and blinked throughout.
“She met him in the lobby of the Alexis Hotel in Seattle and lured him to her room. That was back in the Reagan years, and she has turned up several times since.”
“Ma’am,” said the sheriff—and I remember thinking that this big, pink, kindly, bland child of an officer was the right person to say “ma’am” as slowly as he did—“ma’am, I can’t really comment on that other lady, but this creek comes straight off the mountain, and we’re a long way from town.” Diana watched him closely as he made his case. She was quiet for a moment.
“He’s dead, isn’t he. I knew this would happen.” Diana turned to me. “I suppose that settles it.” I couldn’t think of one thing to do except wrinkle my brow in affected consternation. “Well,” said Diana. “I hope she’s happy now.”
PRAIRIE GIRL
When the old brothel—known as the Butt Hut—closed down, years ago, the house it had occupied was advertised in the paper: “Home on the river: eight bedrooms, eight baths, no kitchen. Changing times force sale.” The madam, Miriam Lawler, an overweight elder in the wash dresses of a ranch wife, beloved by her many friends, and famous for having crashed into the drive-up window of the bank with her old Cadillac, died and was buried at an exuberant funeral, and all but one of the girls dispersed. Throughout the long years that the institution had persevered, the girls had been a constantly changing guard in our lively old cow town. Who were they? Some were professionals from as far away as New Orleans and St. Louis. A surprising number were country schoolteachers, off for the summer. Some, from around the state, worked a day or two a week but were otherwise embedded in conventional lives. When one of them married a local, the couple usually moved away, and over time our town lost a good many useful men—cowboys, carpenters, electricians. This pattern seemed to land most heavily on our tradespeople and worked a subtle hardship on the community. But it was supposed by the pious to be a sacrifice for the greater good.
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