Montana 1948

by Larry Watson

  “What did you see?”

  “Uncle Frank. Uncle Frank was here.”

  “Of course he was. Your mother called him right away when she found Marie.”

  “No, I mean before. Earlier.”

  His hand stopped rubbing. “What time was that, David?” “I’m not sure exactly.”

  “A guess. Take a guess, David.”

  “Around three.”

  My mother crawled quickly across the bed to the other side of me. “What are you saying, David?”

  “Shh, Gail. Let David tell it.”

  I drew a deep breath and with its exhale let the secret out. “I was going fishing with Charley and Ben and we had just come from Ben’s house and we were riding our bikes along the tracks. We were going out to Fuller’s gravel pit. Then I had to go to the bathroom. I didn’t want to go all the way back to our house to go, so I used Len and Daisy’s outhouse.” (In 1948 most, but not all, of the houses in Bentrock had indoor plumbing, yet many homeowners chose to keep their outhouses operational. They saved water, for one thing, and they were useful in case of emergency—if the pipes froze in the winter, for example.) “I told Charley and Ben to go on ahead and I’d catch up. While I was sitting there I saw someone cutting across our backyard. There’s a knothole you can see out of. I was pretty sure it was Uncle Frank. Then I got out and watched him go down the tracks. He was going toward town. I’m pretty sure it was him.”

  “You’re pretty sure, David?” my father asked abruptly. “What do you mean, you’re pretty sure?”

  “I mean I’m sure. I know it was.”

  “Did he have his bag with him?”

  “I think so. Yeah. Yes, he had it.”

  “Was he in the house? Can you be sure? Did you see him come out of the house?”

  Next to me, my mother had pulled together a tangled handful of sheets and bedspread and brought it toward her face.

  “I just saw him coming from that direction.”

  “So you didn’t actually see him come out of our house?”

  “Oh, Wesley,” my mother said in a sobbed half-plea, half-command. “Don’t. You’ve heard enough. No more.”

  My father stood stiffly and limped toward the window. His bad leg always bothered him most when he first got up. “And you say this was around three o’clock?”

  He had long since stopped being my father. He was now my interrogator, my cross-examiner. The sheriff. My uncle’s brother.

  “I think that’s what time it was.”

  “Think, David. Think carefully. When did you last notice the time? Work from there.”

  “At Ben’s. He had to watch his little brother and couldn’t go until his mom came back. She was supposed to be back at two o’clock, but she was late. So maybe it was a little before three.”

  “Did anyone else see Frank? Charley or Ben?”

  “No. They didn’t wait for me.”

  My father looked at my mother. “And you got home when—at five?”

  She got up from the bed and put on her robe. “I told you that before. I came right home at five.”

  My father muttered softly to himself. “He could have been looking in on her. Checking on a patient. Doctors look in on their patients.... She was fine when he left her.... Fine. Used the back door because the front was usually locked. . . .”

  My mother tried to interrupt him. “Wesley.”

  But my father’s reverie continued. “On foot? Truck wasn’t working. Truck was parked down the street at another patient’s house. Gloria dropped him off.”

  “Stop, Wesley.”

  My father gently rapped his knuckles on the window. He stood like that for a long time, tapping the glass and staring out at the night.

  My mother rested her hand on my shoulder, and I took advantage of that kindness to ask, “Is this bad?” I still couldn’t reveal what I knew about Uncle Frank, but again I wanted my parents to let me in. I wanted to know that what I was doing was right and that I wasn’t simply ratting on my uncle. But my mother didn’t answer me. She patted my shoulder reassuringly, and it was my father who finally said, “Bad enough.”

  I pushed a little harder. “Does this mean—”

  My father cut me off. “Does anyone else know? Are you sure no one else saw him? Did you tell anyone else?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone, but. . . .”

  “But what, David?”

  “Maybe Len saw him.”

  My father took a backward step as if he were trying to avoid a punch. “Len?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, God. Goddamn. Len saw Frank.”

  “Maybe. . . .”

  My mother asked me, “What makes you think Len saw, David? ”

  “He said ... I don’t know. He was acting funny. I just think he might have.”

  “That tears it,” said my father. “If Len saw Frank. . . .”

  “It doesn’t change anything,” my mother said. “Not a thing.”

  “Oh really? Maybe. If Len knows, he’ll keep his mouth shut if I ask him. Or if Dad asks him. But he’ll know. There he’ll be, day after day. With that look. I’m not going to live with that look.”

  My mother turned on the lamp beside the bed. In its sudden brightness the first thing I saw was my father’s bad knee. He was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt, and his knee looked inflamed, swollen, scarred, and misshapen, as if his kneecap had been put back in the wrong spot. I saw my father limping every day but I seldom saw the reason. I realized the pain he must have been in constantly, and that pain seemed strangely to connect with the anguish he felt over his brother.

  As if he were suddenly self-conscious in the light, my father put on his trousers.

  “One more thing, David,” my father said as he buckled his belt, the only bit of western regalia he wore—a hand-tooled ranger belt with a silver buckle and keeper. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you can go back to bed. Now you can get some sleep.” In his voice I thought I heard both jealousy and resentment.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep well either. Half-asleep and half-awake, I lay in bed and thought about Indians. In my daily life in Montana I saw Indians every day. There were Indian children in school, their mothers in the grocery store, their fathers at the filling station. Objects of the most patronizing and debilitating prejudice, the Indians in and around our community were nonetheless a largely passive and benign presence. Even the few who were not—Roy Single Feather, for example, who seemed intent on single-handedly perpetuating the stereotype of the drunken Indian and who, when drunk, walked down the middle of Main Street lecturing passersby, cars, and store windows on the necessity of giving one’s life over to Jesus Christ—were regarded as more comedic or pathetic than dangerous.

  But that night Marie’s death and too many cowboy and Indian movies combined to bring me a strange half-dreaming, half-waking vision....

  To the east of Bentrock was a grassy butte called Circle Hill, the highest elevation around. It was treeless, easy to climb, and its summit provided a perfect view of town. That night I imagined all the Indians of our region, from town, ranches, or reservation, gathered on top of Circle Hill to do something about Marie’s death. But in my vision, the Indians were not lined up in battle formation as they always were in the movies, that is, mounted on war ponies, streaked with war paint, bristling with feathers, and brandishing bows and arrows, lances, and tomahawks. Instead, just as I did in my daily life I saw them dressed in their jeans and cowboy boots, their cotton print dresses, or their flannel shirts. Instead of shouting war cries to the sky they were simply milling about, talking low, mourning Marie. Would they ever come down from Circle Hill, rampage the streets of Bentrock, looking for her killer, taking revenge wherever they could find it? My vision didn’t extend that far, and finally I fell completely asleep, still watching Ollie Young Bear and Donna Whitman and George Crow Feather and Simon Many Snows and Verna Bull and Thomas Pelletier and Doris Looks A
way and Sidney Bordeaux and Iris Trimble all walking the top of Circle Hill.

  Three

  WE had planned, of course, to attend Marie’s funeral, but when my father asked Mrs. Little Soldier about when and where it would be, he was told that Marie would not be buried in Montana. Her family was coming from North Dakota and they would take Marie and her mother back to their home in North Dakota. When my father told my mother about this conversation, he said, “I tried to tell Mrs. Little Soldier that this was Marie’s home also and that we thought of her as a member of the family, but she didn’t want to hear. She wants to get out of Montana as quickly as possible.”

  My mother nodded knowingly. “Try to find out where we can send flowers. It’s the least we can do. And we have to do something.”

  Quietly my father replied, “I am doing something, Gail. You know that.”

  I knew what he meant. In the days right after Marie’s death my father was working all the time. He left early in the morning, and he did not return until late at night. When he was home, he was on the phone. (He left his office a few times to come home and use the telephone; there were some matters he didn’t want to discuss in his office.)

  His work habits were familiar enough to me that I knew what was going on: he was building a case, and my father did this the same way he ran for reelection—by gathering in friends and favors. I suppose he was collecting evidence as well, but that part was never as obvious to me. What he seemed intent on doing—just as boys at play do, just as nations at war do—was getting people to be on his side.

  Earlier in the year there had been a controversial arson case. Shelton’s Hardware Store burned to the ground, and my father suspected Mr. Shelton, a well-liked businessman, of setting the fire himself to collect the insurance money. While my father conducted his investigation I was amazed at the change in him. I saw him on the street or in the Coffee Cup, telling jokes and laughing at the jokes of others. He passed out cigars like a new father. He inquired about families; he asked if there were favors he could do for people. Then, when he felt he had garnered enough good will, he made his arrest, exactly at the moment when his popularity was highest in the county. Naturally the consequent community feeling was, “Well, if Sheriff Hayden says it’s so, it must be so.” That feeling frequently carried juries as well. Mr. Shelton was convicted of arson and sent to Deer Lodge State Penitentiary for five years.

  In short, rather than become grim and dogged when closing in on a suspect, my father became good-humored and gregarious. He became charming. He became more like his brother.

  In the few days following Marie’s death there was one significant change in this usual pattern....

  Three days after my mother found Marie dead in our home, around four o’clock on a rainy Thursday afternoon, my father brought Uncle Frank to our house. I had had something planned for the day with my friends, but the rain changed my plans, so I passed the day indoors, working on a balsa-wood model of a B-29 bomber. When my father and Uncle Frank came in the back door, I was at the kitchen table, my fingers sticky with glue and a hundred tiny airplane parts spread out on a newspaper in front of me. Uncle Frank walked in first, and he greeted me jauntily. “Good afternoon, Davy me boy. Wet enough for you?” He was carrying a small satchel, but it was not his medical bag.

  He saw what I was doing and asked, “What’s that you’re working on?”

  I showed him the box the model came in. “B-29.”

  “The B-29,” he said. “I saw a few of those overhead. Always a welcome sight.”

  My father came in right behind Frank, and about him there was nothing of Frank’s good cheer. Unsmiling and mute, my father simply pointed toward the basement stairs, and the two of them crossed the room and descended, my father closing the door behind them.

  They were down there a long time, but I didn’t move from the kitchen. I strained to hear what was going on in the basement, but I heard nothing. Finally, when slow, heavy steps began to climb the stairs, I pretended to be concentrating on my model, though I hadn’t fitted a single piece since they came in.

  My father came through the door—and he came through alone. He closed the door tightly behind him.

  He looked exhausted, as though climbing the stairs had taken all his energy. His face was pale, and he simply stood still for a moment, his back against the basement door. Then he went to the cupboard under the kitchen sink, rummaged around for a moment, and came out with a bottle of Old Grand-Dad. He took a juice glass from the shelf, poured it half full of whiskey, then held the glass to the rain-streaked window as if he were examining the liquid for impurities. He tilted his hat back on his forehead, raised the glass to his lips, closed his eyes, and took a small sip.

  I watched him and discovered that adults could, like kids, be there yet not be there (as I often was in school). As my father took another drink of whiskey, this time a longer one that shuddered through him, I could tell that he was making a long journey while he stood in our kitchen. I waited until I thought he was back and then asked as softly as I could, “Dad?”

  He put his finger to his lips. “In a minute, David. All right? Your mother will be home soon, and I only want to tell this once. We have a new development here.”

  So my father and I remained silent. He continued to sip his whiskey, and I packed up all the tiny pieces of my model plane. The rain clattered and gurgled through the gutters around the house. Once—only once—I thought I heard a noise from the basement that could have been Uncle Frank moving around.

  But was that possible? How could Uncle Frank make any noise when my father had killed him?

  I almost believed that.

  I almost believed my father had taken his brother to a corner of the basement and—and what? Strangled him? Clubbed him? Shot him with a pistol equipped with a silencer? He had somehow killed him soundlessly. My father had tried to find a way to bring his brother to justice for his crimes, but finally, inevitably, unable to do that, he had opted instead for revenge. He had taken his brother into the basement and killed him. What else could explain that look on my father’s face?

  When my mother came home from work, she took one look at my father and asked, “Wes, what’s wrong?”

  He pointed to the basement door. “Frank’s down there.”

  Both my mother and I stared at him, waiting for him to go on.

  My father took off his hat and sailed it hard against the refrigerator. “He’s in the basement. Goddamn it! Don’t you get it—I’ve arrested him. He’s down there now.”

  He stared at us as if there was something wrong with us for being more mystified than ever. Then he turned around, and instead of explaining to us he addressed the rain. “He didn’t want to go to jail. Not here in town.”

  “Frank’s in the basement?” my mother asked.

  My father turned back to us but didn’t speak. He walked over and picked up his hat. He looked it over and began to reshape it, denting it just so with the heel of his hand, pinching the crown, restoring the brim’s roll with a loving brush-and-sweep. He dropped his hat in the center of the table and said solemnly to me, “My brother—your uncle—has run afoul of the law. I had to arrest him. You understand that, don’t you? That I had no choice?”

  He looked close to tears. “I understand,” I said.

  My mother had her purse open and was looking frantically through it as though she could find among its contents the solution to this problem. Without looking up from her search, she asked, “Where in the basement?”

  “In the laundry room. I’ve locked that door.” He held up the key for proof.

  Our basement was unfinished, but the laundry room and its adjoining root cellar were closed off from the rest of the basement by a heavy wooden door (the door used to be in a rural schoolhouse; my father rescued it when the school was going to be torn down). The room where Uncle Frank was locked had a wringer washer, an old galvanized sink, the shower where I had once seen Marie naked, a toilet, and a couple of old dressers for stori
ng blankets and winter clothes. The root cellar had wooden slats over a dirt floor, and shelves stacked deep with jars of home-canned pickles, tomatoes, rutabagas, applesauce, and plum and cherry jam. In another section of the laundry room was our ancient furnace, a huge, silver-bellied monster sprouting ductwork like an octopus’s tentacles.

  “In the basement?” repeated my mother.

  “I wheeled the roll-away in there. He can sleep on that. I’ll take him something to eat after we’ve had our supper.”

  “You’ve turned my laundry room into a jail!”

  “Look,” said my father, “Frank said he’d come with me without a fuss. But he’d like to keep this quiet. He didn’t want to be locked up in the jail. I said I’d respect that, and he’s going to cooperate. Cooperate—hell, he’s acting as if this is all some kind of joke.”

  “Who knows he’s here? Have you talked to Mel?” She was referring to Mel Paddock, the Mercer County state attorney. If my uncle were formally charged with a crime, it would be up to Mr. Paddock to bring those charges on behalf of the state. Mr. Paddock and my father were good friends; during every election they pooled their resources and campaigned together for their respective offices.

  “No one knows about this but the people in this house. I talked around it with Mel, but I didn’t name any names. First I’m going over to tell Gloria.” He looked at his watch. “I should go over there now. I figure she has a right to know—”

  “—that you have her husband locked up in our basement.” My mother groped for a chair as if she were blind. She sat down heavily and let her head rest on the heel of her hand.

  “I’m not saying this is the best—”

  My mother stopped him with her question. “How long?”

  “I’m not sure,” my father replied. “I’m going to call Helena in the morning. Talk to the attorney general’s office and see if we can’t get him arraigned in another county. Or maybe I’ll check with Mel, see if we can do it quickly, get bond set—”

  Again my mother interrupted him. “What are you going to tell Gloria?”