by Larry Watson
“Maybe that Frank’s in some trouble. . . .”
“Tell her the truth. She’s going to hear it anyway. Don’t lie to her.”
He nodded gravely but made no move to leave the kitchen.
“Go now, Wesley,” urged my mother. “She has a right to know where her husband is.”
My father took out his handkerchief and blew his nose—had he been crying quietly and I hadn’t noticed? He put on his hat and went out the back door.
After a moment he was back, calling me outside. “David, could I see you out here?”
I went out immediately, thinking that now my father was going to tell me, man to man, what Uncle Frank’s offense was.
The rain had almost stopped, and my father was waiting for me along the west side of the house. He stood back under the eaves and seemed to be examining the house’s wood.
“Look here, David.” He pointed to a section of siding. I looked but couldn’t see anything.
“What? ”
“The paint. See how it’s blistered and peeling?” With his fingernail he flicked a small paint chip off the house. “It flakes right off.”
I didn’t understand—was there something I was supposed to have done?
“We’re going to have to paint the house,” he said. “But before we do, we’re going to have to scrape it and sand it right down to bare wood. Then prime it good before we paint it. And we might have to put two coats on.” He picked off another paint chip. “It’s going to be hard work. Think you’re up to it?”
“I think so.”
He looked closely at me as if he were inspecting me for signs of peeling, chipping, or flaking. I must have passed inspection, because he clapped me on the shoulder and said, “I think so too. As soon as we get this business with your uncle straightened out, you and I are going to tackle this job.” Was this another of his promises—like a trip to Yellowstone—to make me feel better? Was this the best he could do?
Then, as if it really were houses and paint that he wanted to talk about, he turned back to the wall. “Though if it was up to me, I’d probably just let it go. Let it go right down to bare wood. If I had my way, I’d let every house in town go. Let the sun bake ‘em and the north wind freeze ‘em until there isn’t a house in town with a spot of paint on it. You’d see this town from a distance and it would look like nothing but fire-wood and gray stone. And maybe you’d keep right on moving because it looked like nothing was living here. Paint. Fresh paint. That’s how you find life and civilization. Women come and they want fresh paint.” He looked up at the eaves and gutters, judging perhaps how tall a ladder we’d need. Then he rapped sharply on the wall, three quick knocks to warn it that Wesley Hayden and his son were coming with scrapers, sandpaper, paintbrushes, and white paint, paint whiter than any bones bleaching out there on the Montana prairie.
“One more thing, David.”
“Yes.”
“If there’s any trouble and I’m not here, you run for Len. Understand? Get Len.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Any kind. You’ll know.”
“Len’s drinking again.”
“You just get him. Drunk or sober. Understand?”
“Yes.”
My father held out his hand to test if the rain was still falling. It came back dry. “No putting it off. I’ll go talk to Gloria. Remember what I said.”
“Wait,” I said. “Does Len know?”
“He knows.”
At about nine o’clock that night my grandparents came to our house. My father, mother, and I had been sitting in the living room, paging through the Saturday Evening Post or the Mercer County Gazette, listening to the radio, trying not to think about the fact that a relative was being held captive in our basement. When I think now of how calm we all looked, how natural and domestic this scene was, I find it more disturbing than if we had been crawling around on our hands and knees, howling like wild dogs. When the knock came on the front door, all three of us jumped.
“David,” said my mother, “see who’s here, please.”
I opened the door and saw my grandparents dressed as though they had just come from church. My grandfather wore a double-breasted brown suit, white shirt, and tie. My grandmother’s dress was such a pale yellow that I noticed how deeply tanned she was from working long hours in her garden. She said hello to me, but my grandfather pushed right past me.
My father smiled widely when he saw his parents. “Well, look who’s here. This is a nice surprise—”
Grandfather looked swiftly and suspiciously around the room. “Where’s Frank?”
My father creased his newspaper and set it gently down on the table. “Gloria told you.”
Grandfather took another step forward. “Where is he? Where have you got him? I want to see him.”
My father simply shook his head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Not at this point.”
Meekly my grandmother said, “Gloria was concerned. She wanted us to make certain Frankie’s all right.”
The muscles of my father’s jaw bounced rhythmically. “He’s all right. I told Gloria that.”
Without my having noticed her movement, my mother had come around behind me. She rested her hands on my shoulders.
“Bring him out here,” Grandfather demanded. “Now. Right goddamn now.”
My mother’s voice rose and cracked as she asked, “Wouldn’t you like to sit down? I have some coffee. . . .”
Grandmother smiled sympathetically at my mother. She nodded toward her husband. “He gets so upset.”
“Wesley,” repeated Grandfather. “Get your ass in gear and get your brother out here now.”
I suddenly felt sorry for my father—not as he stood before me at that moment, but as a boy. What must it have been like to have a father capable of speaking to you like that?
“This isn’t about family,” my father said. “This is a legal matter.”
“Bullshit. Then why have you got him locked up here and not over at the jail? This is your brother here. My son!”
I looked at my grandmother. Didn’t she want to say that Frank was her son too?
My father replied, “I wanted to save Frank some embarrassment. I don’t know how long that’s going to be possible.”
My grandfather began to dig furiously through his coat pockets, and I suddenly remembered the incident in Minneapolis when he pulled a gun on a stranger. Why was my father just standing there, his hands hanging defenselessly at his sides? Didn’t he know that his father was going for a weapon?
“Dad!” I said.
My father turned to look at me. My mother squeezed my shoulders hard, and my grandmother pleaded, “Julian, the boy.”
My grandfather was the only one who wasn’t staring at me. He pulled out a cigar and ripped off the cellophane.
My mother whispered sharply in my ear, “Go on upstairs, David. Right away.” She pushed me away from her.
I was glad to get away, and I ran upstairs. But I also wanted to hear how this confrontation would play out, so I hurried to the spare bedroom, the one right over the living room. In that room was a hot-air register in the floor that, when opened, let you hear what was being said in the room below. I crouched down by the register, slowly eased open the metal flap so it wouldn’t rattle or squeak, and laid my ear against the grate.
“Sit down, Dad,” my father was saying. “Please. Let’s all sit down and talk about this calmly and reasonably. Please.”
They must have agreed, because my father next said, “That’s better. There. Gail, why don’t you get us some of that coffee. And get Dad an ashtray. We don’t want him to have to put his ashes in his pants cuff.”
I could tell my father was trying desperately to put everyone in as good a mood as possible. His voice had risen just as it did when he tried to tell a joke. (He was terrible at it—he’d get the parts out of sequence and often mangle the punch line.) My grandfather was grumbling—it sounds, I know, like a trite thing to say ab
out an older man, but in my grandfather’s case it was literally true. When he wasn’t talking he continued to make noise, a sound like a combination of throat-clearing and humming, as though he was keeping himself ready to talk, keeping the apparatus oiled and ready to go.
“Now,” said my father. “Do you want to hear my side of it?”
That struck me as an odd phrase. I hadn’t thought of my father as being against his brother, not in any personal way. I preferred to think of it as though the law had taken a curve in its course, and as a result these two brothers had ended up on opposite sides of the road.
“He’s supposed to have beaten up some Indian,” Grandfather said.
“What?” asked my father. “What are you saying?”
“That’s what Gloria said. Something about assaulting a goddamn Indian. Since when do you get arrested in this part of the country for taking a poke at a man, red or white, that’s what I—”
“Whoa!” my father interrupted. “Wait. What did Gloria say?”
My grandmother’s faint, quavering voice answered him. “She said you arrested Frank for assaulting an Indian.”
My father must have gotten up, because his voice grew louder and softer as if he were moving back and forth in the room. “Mom. Dad. I didn’t arrest Frank for simple assault. I don’t know what Gloria told you. This is for sexual assault. I arrested Frank for . . . for taking liberties with his patients. With his Indian patients.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Grandfather said. “What kind of bullshit is this?”
“There’s cause. I’ve done some investigating, Dad.”
“You—investigating?” In those two words I heard how little respect my grandfather had for my father and anything he did.
“I’ve even found some women who are willing to testify. And some others who aren’t quite ready to talk. Yet. But I’m betting that once they see their friends come forward, they will too. There are a lot of them, Pop. A lot.”
The living room fell so silent I checked to make sure the register hadn’t flapped shut.
Then my mother spoke, in the accomodating, eager-to-please way that she used only with Grandfather and Grandmother Hayden: “We could hardly believe it ourselves.”
Misinterpreting what my mother said, Grandmother quickly, hopefully, said, “A girl could be so easily mistaken. A trip to the doctor. The fear. The confusion. An Indian girl especially—”
“Please, Mom,” said my father. “Not a girl. Many. There’s something to this. Please. Don’t make me say more.”
“Go on,” Grandfather said, “get on out of here. Let him say it to me.”
My mother said, “Come on, Enid. Let’s go out to the kitchen.”
For a moment I thought of changing my station, of running to a different register so I could hear what my mother and grandmother would talk about, but since the conversation in the living room promised to be more revealing, I stayed put.
“Ever since the war,” Grandfather began, “ever since Frank came home in a uniform and you stayed here, you’ve been jealous. I saw it. Your mother saw it. The whole goddamn town probably saw it. But I thought you’d have the good sense not to do anything. Now you pull a fucking stunt like this. I should’ve taken you aside and got you straightened out. If it meant whipping your ass I should’ve got you straightened out.”
There was another long silence before my father said softly, “Is that what you think?”
“That fucking uniform. If I could’ve got you in one, maybe we wouldn’t have this problem.”
“Is that what you think.” This time it was not a question.
“What the hell am I supposed to think? Screwing an Indian. Or feeling her up or whatever. You don’t lock up a man for that. You don’t lock up your brother. A respected man. A war hero.”
“Stop it, Dad. Just stop.”
But I could tell Grandfather couldn’t stop. He had his voice revved up—after all the grumbling, the motor caught and couldn’t be shut off. “Is this why I gave you that goddamn badge? So you could arrest your own brother?”
“Don’t try to tell me law. Don’t.”
“Some Indian thinks he put his hands where he shouldn’t and you’re pulling out your badge.”
“It’s not that. If it was only that....” Here my father’s voice faded. I couldn’t tell if he was walking away or if he had come up against something he didn’t want to talk about.
Grandfather continued to press. “Well, what is it? What the hell’s so big you have to take an Indian’s side and run your brother in?”
My father said something that I couldn’t hear. Neither could Grandfather, because he said, “What? What are you saying? Goddamn, speak up!”
My father’s single-word response boomed so loudly I pulled back from the register.
“Murder!” my father shouted. And a second time even louder: “Murder!”
What sounded like a gasp—it had to be Grandmother’s, as she and my mother ran into the room at my father’s shout—came rushing through the grate like a blast of hot air from the furnace. And then something occurred to me that made it difficult for me to put my ear back to the register.
On the other end of the house, in the basement, Uncle Frank might have been doing exactly what I was doing, listening to his family’s voices boom through the ductwork and discuss his fate. And to hear the shouted word “murder,” Uncle Frank wouldn’t need the aid of the heating system.
I couldn’t shake the image—my uncle Frank with his ear to the basement ventilator—and then it seemed to me that if I were to return to my listening post, Uncle Frank and I could be connected, two ears attached to the same sheet-metal system. And what if Frank should speak, should suddenly shout his innocence—his voice would travel the entire house unheard to arrive at my ear!
After a couple of moments I calmed down. The voices below were going on without me, like a furnace that doesn’t care if anyone is there to feel its heat or not.
Grandmother was sobbing, a series of jerky breaths like hiccups.
Grandfather said, “My God, boy. Look at this. Look at what you’ve done to her.”
My mother said, “Here. Let me.”
“I’m sorry,” said my father.
“Who the hell’s dead anyway?”
“Marie.”
“She was sick! She had pneumonia, for Christ’s sake!”
“He didn’t deny it, Pop. There’s evidence—”
Grandmother’s crying intensified, and I could tell she was having trouble breathing.
“Evidence? What kind of evidence? Go-to-court evidence or a wild hair-up-your-ass evidence?”
“That’s for Mel Paddock to decide.”
“You brought Mel in on this?”
“Not yet.”
“My God. My God, boy. Stop this now. Stop this before I have to.”
“This isn’t for any of us to stop or start. This has to go its own way.”
Not for any of us? I thought again of how I held my uncle in the sights of my pistol, of how I held, even tighter, the secret information that Uncle Frank had been in our house the afternoon Marie died.
“Oh, Wesley, Wesley,” Grandmother said in that special tone that mothers use when pleading with their sons. Could my father withstand its power? I couldn’t hear him make any response.
“Get up,” said Grandfather in a calmer voice. “Let’s go. We’re not going to beg him.”
There was a general rustling about, some footsteps, and I knew they were moving toward the front door and away from my hearing. I heard my mother’s voice, but the only word I could make out was “please.”
The front door closed, but I waited before going downstairs. I don’t know what I was apprehensive about: my grandparents were gone, my uncle was locked in the basement, yet I had reached the point where I was afraid of being with my parents as well. There was so much unpredictable behavior going on that it seemed unwise to depend on anyone. For the moment it felt safer to remain alone on the bedroom
floor, within earshot yet out of sight and reach.
What finally lifted me from the floor and moved me back down the stairs? It was trivial, yet it bore out what a boy I was when all this was going on. In the kitchen was chocolate cake. My father had stopped at Cox’s Bakery the day before and bought a cake, and it was sitting on the counter. A murderer may have been locked up a floor below and the molecules of his victim’s dying breath still floating in the air, yet these were not strong enough finally to stand up to my boy’s hunger for chocolate cake.
As I approached the kitchen where my parents were, I heard my father say, “Help me with this, Gail,” and a chair scraped across the linoleum. I thought he might be moving furniture or changing a light bulb and needed her help.
I was wrong.
I came into the kitchen and saw my mother sitting by the table. My father was on his knees before her, and his head was on her lap. She was rubbing the back of his neck in a way that was instantly recognizable to me: it was exactly the way she rubbed my neck when I had a headache. Overhead, insects flew frantic circles around the kitchen light.
Before I could speak my mother saw me and said so softly I wondered for an instant if my father was sleeping, “Hello, David.”
My father lifted his head and I could tell by his red-rimmed eyes that he had been crying. But that was not what concerned me.
At that moment my father looked so old (he was only thirty-eight at the time), and I knew for the first time how this experience with his brother was ruining him physically. Was that the moment I realized my father would die someday? Perhaps. At any rate I knew that the puffiness around his eyes, the deepening creases of worry across his forehead and around his mouth, his pallor, his slow, stiffening gait were all signs that he was growing weaker. I also knew that to continue to stand up to Grandfather, my father needed all the strength he possessed. And perhaps that would still not be enough.
As if she could read my mind, my mother said, “Your father’s just tired, David.”
Using his good leg to brace himself, my father pushed himself to his feet. “We’re all tired,” he said. “Let’s hit the hay.”
I wasn’t tired, and I didn’t want to go to bed. I wanted my parents to tell me what happened when Grandfather and Grandmother were there. Though I knew exactly what was said, I wanted my parents to interpret it all for me. I wanted them to explain it so it wasn’t as bad as the facts made it seem.
