by Larry Watson
That’s not—
So maybe you want to try again. Blanche twists her body around on the bed as if she intends to lie down next to Margaret. Maybe you want to present your argument now, when the odds are a little closer to even.
Fear can visit anyone, but on some people it can never stay. By now Margaret Blackledge has summoned back the nerve that is as much a part of her being as the color of her eyes. Is Lorna here? Margaret asks. Have you got her outside in the car? Because I’m only discussing this subject in her presence.
No, no, no. Blanche waggles her finger. You’ll discuss it with me. And you’ll stay away from that young lady.
Those are not decisions for you to make.
Aren’t they? Blanche swings a leg onto the bed. If Margaret were up and dressed it might be noted that both women wear Western boots, though Blanche’s are lustrous black leather, decorated with white stitching and stamped with floral designs.
Bill Weboy walks about the room, inspecting it casually as if he needs to confirm an impression. His movement sets his nephews in motion, and they also start circling the room. Gradually Bill makes his way to the side of the bed and stands so close that his legs touch the mattress.
Flanked and hemmed in by Weboys, Margaret jerks the chenille bedspread and says to Blanche, Get your goddamn feet off my bed!
Blanche does not obey. Instead she moves around on the bed until her back, like Margaret’s, is against the iron spindles of the frame. I think, Blanche says, we got off to a bad start, you and me. We should have talked about raising our own kids before we jumped off into being grandparents. Now me, I’ve always believed in letting my children find their own way once they’re grown. Of course, I only had boys and that might have colored things. What did you have—a girl and a boy? So maybe you thought different how it should be done. Maybe you think you always know what’s best. I understand that. But wouldn’t you agree—even when you see them making a mistake you have to butt out?
Bill Weboy leaves the bedside to wander around the cabin again. He peers into the bathroom and into the open closet. He walks to the dresser where George’s suitcase lies open and though he doesn’t disturb the contents he examines them closely, looking up at George from time to time as though he hadn’t truly understood the man until he inspected George’s socks, his underwear, and his carefully folded but frayed and faded shirts and dungarees. For George’s part, he keeps his own gaze fixed on Bill Weboy.
Margaret edges away from Blanche Weboy. I didn’t say it was a mistake for Lorna to marry your son.
Oh-ho! I never said you said!
Bill returns to the bedside. Lorna picked your boy, he says and nods toward Margaret. Then yours, he says to Blanche. You’d think you two could meet on that common ground.
Margaret’s tremor has worsened in the last minute, and when she speaks now her words totter as though she hasn’t found where to put the weight that will balance them. I’m tempted to say I don’t give a damn what Donnie and Lorna do. As far as I’m concerned they’re free to find their way or get themselves lost. It’s Jimmy I’m concerned with. He had a good home when he lived under my roof.
And now he’s under mine.
How strange the enmity between these two women! It couldn’t be any plainer in this cabin if it whirled visibly in the air like dust, yet at this moment they glare at each other across a distance that could be closed with a kiss.
Their stalemate and the silence it engenders—the arguments can barely be cogently thought, much less mouthed—provide Bill Weboy with an opportunity. By God, now I recognize this place. I used to bring a lady here. She was from Miles City, but when she was sneaking around behind her husband’s back she didn’t want his back anywhere near. Even coming here she wouldn’t park her car out front.
When was this? asks Blanche.
Take it easy. This was a few years back.
Maybe we don’t need to hear about your life as a Casanova just now.
Bill shrugs. Can’t say I blamed her though. Her husband was a sonofabitch of the first water. I understood her coming here. I just didn’t understand her going back. He reaches down and slips his index finger inside the neckline of Margaret’s nightgown, right between her shoulder and her collarbone. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Grandma?
If, in his attempt to attack Bill Weboy, George had taken the shortest route—across the bed instead of around it—he might have gotten his hands around the man’s throat, as he perhaps intended. But that path would have had him clambering over both Blanche and Margaret. As it is, going around the bed costs George an extra second or two, and he never makes it to his target.
Margaret is so quick scrambling down the bed that she seems to be reaching toward George at almost the same instant his blood begins to flow.
But of course she’s too late to do anything but pity him.
And of course George was too late—too late, too old, and too slow—to get at the man who had his hand on his wife, before Marvin Weboy—or was it Elton?—struck him hard on the side of the head with a rubber mallet drawn without notice from that canvas bag. So now George sits on the floor at the foot of the bed—where he went down hard on his knees, then pitched forward and hit his head on the frame, opening a gash above his left eye—stunned like a cow before slaughter, bleeding, and not quite able to comprehend the many choices, steps, and missteps that brought him to this position.
Bill Weboy hasn’t moved from the bedside. He takes a moment to contemplate George’s predicament, then smiles and walks to the bathroom. He comes out with a towel and hands it to George. You don’t want to get blood on the floor. That’ll cost you extra for sure.
Margaret reaches through the iron spindles and touches George gently on the top of his head. Recognition comes into his eyes like a sunrise. Margaret. Blood. The floor. The mallet that clubbed him and the wooly-headed young man who wielded it. The older Weboy who stands above him as if George were merely something else that needed to be cleaned out of the gutter. George rises unsteadily.
Blanche Weboy is lying on the sheets that he and Margaret tangled in their lovemaking. You want to try again talking this over like reasonable folk, she says, or would you prefer to get some sleep so you can get an early start back home tomorrow morning?
Bill Weboy has returned to his post beside the bed, and he stands so close you’d think he was Margaret’s protector rather than her tormentor. He reaches down and gives the bed covering a tug, something that Margaret is sure to feel. Or maybe, Bill says in a voice pitched low for Margaret’s ears, you’d like to send him home while you stay on for a spell. I could take you back when you’re ready. Of course, by then you might decide you’d rather stay.
In her own lowered voice, Blanche says to her brother-in-law, Let’s keep to the matter at hand.
Meanwhile, George has staggered back and is leaning against the dresser, and the Weboy with the mallet moves over next to him.
Margaret twists herself around on the bed as if she’s unsure of where she should direct her attention. Should it be toward Blanche, whose languid pose is calculated to conceal her claws and fangs? Or toward Bill, who never stops smiling, even as he’s poking at her with a thick finger? Or George, who’s still bleeding and appears woozy? But she and Blanche are the ones in the boat, and it’s to Blanche that Margaret finally turns. I want, Margaret says, to take Jimmy back with me.
Blanche laughs. I know what you want! Christ, woman!
Not for a visit. For good. I want Jimmy with me.
Is this how she gets her way? Blanche says to George. She just stays with a thing until everyone else gets tired and walks away? Blanche sits up, bringing herself so close to Margaret that she must feel as well as hear the heat of Blanche’s words. Well, I don’t give up. And I don’t walk away.
And you think I will?
Blanche sighs and shakes her head. Then she looks to Bill and points tiredly to Margaret as if signaling that he can now take a turn at persuading her.
But George has not been as dazed as everyone seems to have thought, and he has not been standing by the dresser only to steady himself. He has groped around inside his suitcase until his hand found the gun’s hard shape.
Would he have used it only to threaten? Or would he have fired it immediately? And if so, at whom? Bill? Blanche? Probably not the Weboy standing closest to him—Marvin, definitely Marvin—and that is a mistake, for it is Marvin, still holding the heavy rubber mallet, who first sees the gun, Marvin who strikes George a second time, and even harder than before.
Once again George falls, and the blow causes him to loosen his grip on the pistol. It slips from his hand and skids across the linoleum and under the bed.
Get it! Get the gun! Blanche cries, though she is the quickest to it, jumping from the bed and reaching under to bring the .45 out from that dark space. Goddamnit! she says. Hold on to him—and see to it he can’t pull the trigger!
Blanche’s commands are so swift and so swiftly understood and obeyed that it seems as though all the participants must have planned and even rehearsed what happens next in Cabin Number Eight.
The Weboy brothers grab George’s hand and wrist and roughly lift his arm in the air. George’s legs are awkwardly folded under him, so he can do nothing to push himself away from the brothers’ grasp. Besides, the brothers don’t seem interested in hauling George to his feet but only in raising his arm. He tries pulling back but he’s no match for the strength of the two young men.
Margaret has barely moved toward George before Bill Weboy grabs her hair, her long gray hair that she unpinned before she came out of the bathroom and climbed into bed with her husband. He pulls hard and Margaret topples backward on the bed. Then he hurries to help his nephews.
One of the Weboy brothers lets go of George’s wrist long enough to push the suitcase off the dresser. Then the brothers jam George’s hand—or at least three fingers of his hand, since one brother has a hold of George’s thumb and little finger—against the dresser’s edge.
Shit—watch out for my fingers, says a Weboy.
Then it is clear. As if the shadows had been pushed back to the corners, everything is clear.
Look out then, says Bill Weboy as he raises the hatchet he’s taken from the canvas satchel.
And before Margaret can call out, before George can summon the burst of strength that might enable him to pull back, pull back before it’s too late, the blade falls, passing through the skin, blood vessels, nerves, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones of George Blackledge’s index, middle, and ring fingers, severing all three just above the base knuckles, before burying itself in the dresser’s soft pine.
George’s grunted Ooohh! sounds born not of pain but of exertion, as if he had torn his own fingers from his hand. And the groan must sound familiar to Margaret, who heard something similar rush out of him earlier in the evening.
25.
THE WEBOYS RELEASE GEORGE AND HE SLIDES DOWN again, watching, as he goes, his three fingers, which seem to hold on to the dresser for an instant before they lose their grip—or so it seems—and slip to the floor. Bill Weboy kicks at them but strikes only one and it skitters against the wall.
To Blanche, Bill Weboy says, All right. He won’t be pulling a trigger again. Weboy drops the hatchet back into the canvas satchel.
Instinctively George clasps his left hand over what’s left of his right and raises both of them to slow the blood flow. He presses both hands against his chest. The blood leaking out from his hands catches in the white hairs of his chest and creates a webbed pattern.
He looks up at Bill Weboy and through gritted teeth says, You cocksucker.
Bill Weboy smiles and puts his finger to his lips. Language like that? Not in front of the womenfolk.
My God, my God, Margaret says. By now she has arrived at her husband’s side, and she takes his hands in hers and presses them to her abdomen. Blood seeps into the white cotton muslin and the stain spreads so quickly it seems as though the blood were flowing out of her. She falls to her knees in front of him and when George sees the blood on her nightgown he pulls his hands away and falls back against the dresser. Oh my God. George . . .
Blanche is standing over them now and the .45 is in her hand. She dangles it by its trigger guard as if it were an object whose purposes were a mystery to her.
I’ll tell you what’s going to happen next, Blanche says, and her words seem as practiced as everything else that has happened in the past few minutes. You’re going to get him to the hospital quick as you can. And while you’re there and the doctor is working on Mr. Blackledge, we’ll be at the sheriff’s office. Stanley Munson is his name. We’ll rouse Stanley from his bed, and I’ll tell Stanley what happened here. How your husband pulled a gun on us, and how rough things got, and how we took it away from him, and what happened in the process. For proof, I’ll put the gun on Stanley’s desk. Now, Stanley and I go way back. He’s a good man and he’ll listen to what I have to say. By the time he talks to you, he’ll know the whole story. How you came here looking to take a child away from his mother. First with sweet talk and then with a gun.
Blanche bends down close to the Blackledges. Of course it’ll be up to Stanley and the state’s attorney but I’ll try to convince them to let the two of you go on back to North Dakota.
She stands up again. Because I don’t think you’re going to make any more trouble here, are you?
Without being given a command to do so, the Weboy brothers and their uncle start backing up toward the door. Blanche pivots smartly and follows them. In the open doorway she stops and looks back at the Blackledges. Lorna told me you don’t even go to church. And yet you think you’re the ones who ought to be raising that boy.
Then the Weboys are gone, and for a moment Margaret holds her husband close, pulling his head to her breasts. Oh George, she wails. What have I brought us to! What have I done! What have I done to you!
You haven’t done a goddamn thing to me. Not yet, anyway. But you’re about to. You’ll have to drive me to the hospital.
Margaret throws her mackinaw over her bloodstained nightgown and pulls her boots on over her bare feet. Together they manage to get George’s dungarees on, and Margaret covers his bare shoulders with his shirt. Then they both discover something about what the coming years will mean, though neither says a word about the subject. A man missing three fingers on his right hand will have to learn new ways of buttoning a coat and pulling on his boots.
26.
YOUNG LAWRENCE WYATT, THE PHYSICIAN ON CALL AT Gladstone’s Good Samaritan Hospital, has been telephoned and summoned, and he arrives at the hospital within a half hour. When he unwraps the blood-soaked towel covering George’s hand, the doctor’s eyes, heavy-lidded with sleep until that instant, widen in shock. In order to regain his professional demeanor, he brings his face close to George’s hand and narrows his eyes. Jesus, the doctor says, what the hell happened?
Somebody chopped them off, George answers.
Dr. Wyatt quickly steps back. He addresses his next question to the nurse, a tall, trim, attractive older woman with tiny maps of varicose veins on her cheeks. Have the police been called, Adeline?
It’s Margaret, however, who answers. The sheriff, she says. He’s been made aware. And he’ll likely be here soon enough.
Once again the doctor directs his question to the nurse. Do I wait?
Adeline shakes her head slowly. You do not.
I believe it would be best, Dr. Wyatt says to Margaret, if you waited outside. In the waiting room.
Margaret makes no move to leave but when George tells her, Go, she walks numbly out of the brightly lit room, her boot heels echoing on the tile floor.
The doctor, a rusty-haired young man who possesses, incidentally, long delicate fingers, carefully turns George’s hand over and examines the back as well as the palm.
An axe, you said? Dr. Wyatt asks.
I didn’t, George replies. But no. A hatchet.
Well, he keeps it
sharp. This is a very clean cut. You must have held still for it.
Didn’t have much choice, George says through gritted teeth.
I didn’t mean . . . I’m sorry. Never mind. The doctor steps back. My God. Someone who’d do this . . . barbaric.
To this George says nothing. He has tilted his head back and seems to be concentrating on nothing more than breathing in and breathing out.
I’ll give you the choice, Dr. Wyatt says. I can put you under, or I can numb it up and you can stay awake.
I’ll stay awake.
But you’ll have to keep still.
I’m not going anywhere.
After numbing George’s hand, Dr. Wyatt smokes a cigarette and makes certain he has everything he needs near at hand. Once he begins, he works slowly and deliberately, as if he’s following a checklist in his mind, and he asks no more questions of George, either about his life generally or about the savagery recently unleashed upon him.
The stumps are cleaned with water and alcohol. Some tissue is debrided. The doctor’s comments about a clean cut notwithstanding, a few slivers of bone have to be tweezed from the third finger’s pulpy mass. The oozing blood vessels and still-wriggling nerve ends are cauterized. The doctor recruits as much loose skin as he can and stitches the flaps together with a network of black thread. Once the sutures are all tied off and the doctor has finished his work, the nurse gives George two injections, one an antibiotic and the other a tetanus vaccine.
When the entire procedure is over, Margaret is called back into the room. George smiles wanly at her and holds up his bandaged hand. Now I’ll be wearing mittens instead of gloves.
Margaret ducks inside his raised arm and kisses him on the forehead, just above the cut he received when he banged into the bed frame. It’s a gash that might, under other circumstances, have warranted a few stitches. Tonight it’s been covered with two Band-Aids. Margaret repeats the phrase that she uttered over and over again as she drove her husband to the hospital. I’m so sorry, she says.
