by Larry Watson
Now it is Margaret who looks to Bill Weboy for clarification. Lorna . . . ?
She’s working at Monkey Ward, Bill says.
In Gladstone?
You didn’t tell them? asks Blanche.
Bill shrugs. I thought maybe they’d be back by now.
We could’ve seen Lorna and Jimmy in Gladstone?
Blanche waggles her finger at Margaret. Now I’m feeling insulted. You really don’t give a damn about my cooking, do you?
I just meant . . .
Maybe you’re a Jew. Maybe you can’t eat pork chops.
George interlaces his fingers once again. Neither he nor his wife say anything, and after a long silent moment in which the only movement is the shifting cloud of Bill Weboy’s cigar smoke, Blanche laughs. Oh, breathe easy. Anyone who knows me knows I can’t be insulted. Eat my pork chops or don’t.
We’d certainly hoped, Margaret says, to meet Donnie’s family someday.
Did you. Well, I thought we should meet too. Bill, as long as you’re standing there you could pour me another glass of wine. Blanche points at George and Margaret. You sure?
I’m not much of a wine drinker, George says.
Something stronger, maybe?
He shakes his head.
How about you? Blanche asks Margaret. You a teetotaler?
Oh no, says Margaret. I take a drink of whiskey every year or two.
Bill Weboy sets a full jelly glass of elderberry wine in front of Blanche and then resumes his post leaning against the icebox.
Blanche says, A special-occasion drinker, eh? And this doesn’t qualify? She raises her glass and sips delicately. The truth is, I thought we should meet and have a talk. Donnie thinks maybe the two of you don’t approve of him. With her ability to smile and scowl at the same time, Blanche Weboy looks from Margaret to George and back to Margaret again.
George raises his head slowly and levels his gaze at Blanche. Donnie gives a damn what we think? I’m surprised to hear that.
Blanche slips a cigarette from the pack of Pall Malls on the table. By the time the cigarette arrives at her lips, Bill Weboy has stepped forward with a lit match.
I wonder, Blanche says, if you ain’t been comparing Donnie to your son. And that’s never fair to the living. They can’t ever measure up to the dead.
Is Donnie working? Margaret asks.
He’s not as mechanically inclined as Marv or Elton but Donnie puts in his time out in the barn. Blanche blows a stream of smoke Margaret’s way. Not that Donnie needs to answer to you.
No, he certainly doesn’t. And I don’t have to talk up my son’s virtues to you.
Blanche Weboy leans back in her chair and fans her face. Ho-ho! We better get some food in our bellies before this get-together turns into a real blood feud—the Weboys versus the Blackledges!
And we got numbers on ’em, says Bill with a chuckle.
As if his statement required illustration, at that moment the brothers Weboy clomp back into the kitchen.
Blanche arches her eyebrows. I better feed these boys or we won’t be joking about a feud. Margaret, will you deal out those plates? Bill, you can pull those pork chops out of the oven. And they’re probably dried out by now, so grab some ketchup and Worcestershire too.
The Weboy brothers seat themselves. Margaret and Bill do as they’ve been asked—she sets the table, and from the oven Bill brings a cake pan piled with pork chops. As soon as he sets it down, the brothers grab two chops apiece. Blanche walks around the table with a pot and puts a few boiled potatoes on every plate. The evening’s vegetable—canned corn—is served from a large bowl. Blanche starts to sit down, then stops. She retrieves a loaf of store-bought bread from a drawer and puts it on the table next to the butter. We don’t stand on ceremony around here, she says. Help yourselves and if you need something you don’t see, just ask. If I got it, you can have it.
Blanche Weboy puts food on her plate but makes no move to eat. She watches her sons like a mother who restrains herself in case she has to give up her portions to her children. For their part, Elton and Marvin eat with such focused vehemence that any conversation would seem out of place.
A car’s headlights sweep across the kitchen window. The sound of a car’s engine throbbing before a clunk and then silence. A car door slams and then another. George and Margaret look up expectantly, their knives and forks poised. In another moment, the back door rattles open and someone calls out, Anybody home?
It’s Donnie . . .
19.
HE APPEARS IN THE DOORWAY, SMILING AND RAISING A finger to the bill of his baseball cap in greeting to the diners. His first steps forward clatter on the kitchen floor.
Goddamnit! his mother says. Don’t come in here in those shoes! You’re going to chew up this linoleum and it ain’t even two months old!
The hell, Bill says. You still playing baseball?
We’re playing until the snow flies, says Donnie. And come next spring we’ll have a leg up on every other team in the league.
You’ll need more than a leg up, Marvin says, if you don’t want your ass kicked.
Donnie is not only the best looking of the Weboy brothers, his presence in the room puts a little polish on Marvin and Elton. Now it’s possible to see how close those thick wooly curls are to a head of wavy hair, how near those sullen expressions are to pouting sensuality, to see how easily those low, heavy brows could translate to a brooding charm. It’s even possible, looking from Donnie to his brothers to his uncle Bill, to imagine what the boys’ father must have looked like. A handsome man.
Without untying the laces of his cleats, Donnie steps on the heels and kicks the shoes back out into the entryway, the dark cave that George and Margaret are watching so intently.
Hey! a woman’s voice says. Watch it! Lorna steps into the kitchen’s light. She’s a slender, pretty woman who looks tired and mussed from a long day on her feet. Her hair has lost some of the wave that it no doubt had when she left the house this morning. Her lipstick has been chewed or licked away. Under her eyes are semicircles almost as dark as bruises. Both her blouse and skirt look a size too large for her. Lorna’s holding her son, who clings to his mother as if she had fur.
Hello, Jimmy, Margaret says.
At the sound of her voice, the boy looks up quickly. Recognition flares in his eyes, but then, as if even four-year-olds understand that on some occasions they must stop themselves from speaking, he quickly puts his thumb in his mouth, hooking his index finger comfortably around his nose.
Uh-uh, Blanche says, and Lorna hastily pulls Jimmy’s thumb from his mouth.
To Margaret, Blanche looks for affirmation. Am I right? Sure way to end up with buck teeth?
But Margaret displays no interest in orthodontics or child discipline. She has eyes only for her grandson. She rises from the table and walks toward the boy with her arms extended. Jimmy neither shrinks from her nor reaches out.
May I? Margaret asks Lorna.
Lorna shrugs her son from her shoulder and he goes willingly, letting his weight fall into his grandmother’s waiting arms.
Jimmy. She kisses the top of the boy’s head. I’ve missed you so much, she says, closing her eyes and breathing in the child’s essence. Jimmy . . .
A look passes between Blanche and Lorna, and though George seems to have caught it, Margaret is lost to any world outside the circle of her arms.
Relieved of her son’s weight, Lorna stretches and massages the small of her back. God, she says, he’s turning into a load. This she says of a pale, delicate, thin-limbed child who nestles into his grandmother’s embrace without a wriggle or a complaint.
I told you, says Donnie. You pick him up too much. How’s he supposed to learn?
Learn what? How to walk? He knows how to walk.
Hell, I’d probably unlearn how myself if someone would carry me everywhere I wanted to go. That’s flat-out spoiling him.
Has he eaten? Blanche asks.
I bought him a hamburger at Ressl
er’s. While we were waiting for Lorna.
And did he eat it?
About half.
Does he want a pork chop? Some potato? Blanche reaches over and tugs on Jimmy’s foot. Do you? Can I cut up a little meat for you?
Without taking his head from his grandmother’s shoulder the boy says no.
What’s that? What are you supposed to say? Blanche yanks harder on Jimmy’s foot.
The words are muffled because he speaks them into Margaret’s neck, but Jimmy says, No, thank you.
To Lorna Blanche says, Take him up to bed then.
Lorna makes no attempt to take her son back from his grandmother nor Margaret to pass him back to his mother.
We believe, Blanche says to George as if he’s the one who has an interest in the matter, in early-to-bed in this house. Blanche reaches up and pats Jimmy’s bottom. And we believe in walking up the stairs on your own two feet.
Margaret backs up a few steps and tightens her hold on her grandson. Her eyes are open now, darting from one Weboy to another before settling coldly on Blanche.
Easy now, Grandma, says Bill Weboy, moving to stand between Margaret and the door. You know who makes the rules here.
At this remark George stands again, abruptly this time, his chair skidding across Blanche Weboy’s new linoleum. Marvin pushes away from the table too but remains in his chair.
Then only the kerosene lamp’s flame wavers. The room and its occupants are as still as a photograph, Weboys and Blackledges caught in a pose of wary readiness.
A gust of wind doesn’t suddenly bang a door open. A clock doesn’t chime. The phone doesn’t ring. Yet in the next instant the stillness breaks as if it were made of crystal. Marvin drinks his milk. Elton spears himself another pork chop. Donnie’s shoulders slump. Bill Weboy unwraps another cigar and lights it. What has passed in this room cannot be named but passed it has. Margaret bends down slowly and sets Jimmy back on his feet. When she does, he looks up at her with incomprehension, a child who, like most children, seldom understands why adults want to pick him up or put him down.
As if he’s not been responsible for his own propulsion for a long time, Jimmy tests the floor under him, shifting from side to side and lifting one foot and then the other.
There was mustard, he says.
On your hamburger? asks Margaret.
He nods.
And you don’t like mustard, do you?
He shakes his head.
The child has his grandmother’s blue eyes but none of her smiling energy. He looks instead as if he, like his grandfather, would prefer to make shapes with his fingers and stare into their darkness.
Blanche claps her hands twice, and Jimmy flinches at the sound. Off you go, she says. Up the stairs.
It’s been months, says Margaret, her voice strained, since we saw the boy.
More like weeks, Donnie says.
Well, says Blanche, now that you know how to find us, you’ll have to visit more often.
Donnie shoves Lorna, and she lurches from the force, and then reaches a hand down to her son. Come on, Jimmy.
He slips his hand into hers. Anyone can see he is a child who will take any offered hand, lacking the certainty or courage to refuse it. As he and his mother walk away he glances back only once. A four-year-old has so little past, and he remembers almost none of it, neither the father he once had nor the house where he once lived. But he can feel absences—and feel them as sensation, like a texture that was once at his fingers every day but now is gone and no matter how he gropes or reaches his hand he cannot touch what’s no longer there. His legs seem too thin for his body, and he can’t gauge how to match his steps to his mother’s.
Please, says Margaret.
When he hears the pleading tone in his wife’s voice, George moves quickly. That’s enough, he says, coming to her side and putting an arm across her shoulders. Enough.
Margaret keeps watching after her grandson, who has glanced back only once, his expression puzzled over this punishment he has done nothing to deserve.
Don’t beg, George whispers to his wife, then steers her toward the door. To the assembled Weboys he says, We thank you but we’ll be on our way.
Well, I guess we know who matters to you, Blanche says, standing and putting her hands on her hips. You’re rushing off before the pie. But if you have to go, you have to go. Drive safe.
George and Margaret hurry as best they can through the cluttered porch and out the back door. Their eyes are unaccustomed to the darkness, total as only a cloudy night on the prairie can be. They stumble in the direction of their car, for the moment nothing but a black shape distinguished from the surrounding dark by its vague suggestion of substance.
Behind them a screen door slams and a voice calls after them. Whoa, wait up there, Blackledges!
Margaret keeps walking, but George stops and turns toward a white shirt hurrying their way.
It’s Bill Weboy, who says, Just wanted to see if you needed to get pointed in the right direction. I’d lead you back to Gladstone but I’m spending the night here. Or maybe you’re heading for home, back to your own side of the Badlands?
I can find the way, George says.
You sure? If you left a trail of bread crumbs, the coyotes have eaten them by now.
I can find the way.
If you say so. Bill Weboy looks past George to Margaret opening her car door. Running off like this, Weboy says, you hurt Blanche’s feelings. She won’t say so but I can tell.
Her feelings! Her feelings! Margaret leaves her door open to charge back toward Bill Weboy. The feeble light from the car follows her. We come all this way to see our grandson—our grandson, not hers!—and then she gives us two minutes before banishing Jimmy like a dog who pissed on her precious floor!
Bill Weboy raises his hands. Easy there, missus. Let’s not forget our manners. I’m sure Blanche would be happy to play hostess to you again sometime. But she’s trying real hard to get Donnie and Lorna squared away. Them two don’t know much about raising a kid. Left up to them, he’d be up until all hours and eating ice cream for breakfast.
And are you out here now because she sent you to smooth my feathers?
Hah! If you think that, then you don’t know Blanche Weboy. She don’t give a damn whose feathers are ruffled.
Go back inside, Mr. Weboy, Margaret says. The night’s cold and you don’t want to catch a chill.
I sure as hell feel that. Bill Weboy pivots and walks away. Something in the night air, perhaps the vapor of breath, makes it seem as though that departing figure were puffing smoke, though Bill Weboy left his cigar in the house.
George, who has kept himself between his wife and Bill Weboy during their exchange, turns Margaret back toward the car.
They are inside the Hudson when Margaret says, His brother’s wife indeed!
George turns the key to start the engine but Margaret thrusts out a restraining hand. Wait! Look. In the upstairs window.
Silhouetted there is the unmoving shape of what is almost certainly a mother holding a child.
Margaret waves.
I doubt she can see you, says George. He shifts the car into gear.
Wait. For just a moment.
She’s not locked up in the tower, you know. She married the man of her own free will.
But not his family.
No? A husband or a wife is usually a package deal. You know that.
Not you, George. You came unencumbered.
That I did. Then, without her permission, he drives away from the Weboy ranch.
Two miles will pass before the Blackledges will see anything rising higher from the prairie than the two stories of the Weboy house and its nearby elm tree, from which the auto engine hangs. Then the road will climb a rocky butte, its southern slope that hours before had been black with pines. When they descend they’ll bisect the pastureland where cattle are bedded down invisibly among the grasses they grazed earlier. In another mile will come the turn they cannot miss if they
want to find their way back to the main highway. Soon the steel skeletons of power lines will come into view. These and other landmarks George Blackledge had noted, as a man will when finding his way back is more important to him than traveling into new territory.
20.
THEY DECIDE TO SPEND THE NIGHT IN GLADSTONE, AND after driving up and down Main Avenue and the surrounding business district they eventually return to the western outskirts of the city and the Prairie View Motor Court, accommodations that look as though they’ll be cheaper than the Harrison House hotel or one of the three motels on the eastern edge of the city.
The night clerk, a bored-looking younger man who moves slowly and with the squeak of metal and leather because his shoes and lower legs are encased in braces, assigns them Cabin Number Eight, the farthest in a line of small, squat, whitewashed structures, though no other cars are parked in the lot. Cabin Eight, unlike Four, Five, and Six, has its own bathroom and its occupants don’t have to use the outhouse, though they can if they like, the clerk adds with a barely concealed, self-satisfied smirk.
The cabin’s interior has the same spare, tidy look as Bill Weboy’s living room, and its mismatched furnishings might have come from estate sales. A bed with an old iron frame and a threadbare white coverlet. A low dresser made of dark wood and a painted nightstand. A rocking chair that might have once graced a front porch. A rag rug and a square of linoleum cover the warped wood floor, though not quite to the bare walls.
Tired as they are, the Blackledges unpack everything from the backseat of the car and bring into the cabin their pillows and blankets, boxes of groceries and other supplies. Since the experience with Alton Dragswolf, Margaret wants nothing visible in the car to tempt someone who might look in its windows.
As they unpack, Margaret talks about her grandson, explaining him to her husband as if George didn’t have eyes to witness the boy for himself. What I noticed, Margaret says, was how much more grown-up he is. He understands more. I could see it in his eyes. I mean, he’s always been a child who takes in everything, he’s like his father that way, but now he’s doing something with what he sees and hears. I can tell. He’s thinking. And God only knows what he thinks about that house and its people. It can’t be good for a child.
