Let Him Go: A Novel

by Larry Watson

  At idle, the Ford’s engine has smoothed out and thrums evenly. The car’s headlights illuminate the back of the Blackledges’ Hudson, the numerals of their North Dakota license plate—133-407—blackly gleaming.

  Margaret says, You have to leave these good people alone, Mr. Weboy. Please.

  These would be the good people threatening to beat the hell out of me or blow me to kingdom come?

  From somewhere on the block comes the hollow, rubbery ponk of a kicked ball, followed by a shout—Hah! No good! It’s late for boys to be playing football. Good weather or not, it’s still a school night.

  Please, Margaret says again.

  Here you’re asking me to leave, Mrs. Blackledge, and I only came here to smoke the peace pipe. You have to believe me when I say how sorry I am your visit here turned out the way it did. Even if the only reason you came here was to talk a mother out of her only child. No, no, let me finish. I’m here to see if you can use any help with anything. I know you got yourself checked out of the Prairie View okay. And you and Adeline got your car packed and ready to go. So it seems like you took care of everything on your own. You said good-bye to Blanche and Lorna. And whatever farewell you gave that grandson will have to be good enough. Bill Weboy turns away from the porch, takes two steps, and throws his cigar as hard and as high as he can. It tumbles end over end, its sparks pinwheeling through the dark. When he faces Margaret and the Witts once again, it is without any pretense of courtesy or charm. When that husband of yours gets out of the hospital? Get the hell out of Gladstone. I mean it. Don’t dawdle.

  Bill Weboy’s business is done. He doesn’t stroll down the sidewalk as he did when he approached the Witt home. He strides across the lawn and climbs into the waiting automobile.

  As soon as the Ford pulls away, a football bounces erratically into the street in front of the Witts’ house. It must be the ball that one of the boys kicked moments before, but no one runs into the street after it. When it finally wobbles to rest against the curb it’s with a stillness so complete it seems the ball will remain there forever. Where is the boy whose heart will break if he can’t find his football? Where is the boy who will be punished if he loses the football he once begged for? But the crickets’ scraping song has nothing to say on the subject of boys and their playthings.

  33.

  GEORGE BLACKLEDGE SITS ON THE EDGE OF HIS BED WITH the bottle held tight between his thighs. It’s two o’clock in the morning. The ward is dark and the only sound is the stertorous breathing of the old man four beds away from George. With the fingers of his left hand, George tries to take the cap off the bottle of Old Crow.

  His first attempts are clumsy and unnatural, but eventually he’s able to coordinate the twisting and pulling. Whiskey fumes rise from the open bottle. Good enough. Then, with less effort than he expended earlier, he puts the cap back on and returns the bottle to the cabinet.

  As he does, a figure walks out of the shadows and approaches his bed.

  In a voice pitched perfectly between speech and whisper, as only someone practiced in a hospital’s middle-of-the-night hush can manage, Adeline Witt says, That’s a hell of a lot of work to go through and then not even bring the bottle to your lips.

  Just checking to see if I could do it, says George. In case of an emergency.

  And awake at two o’clock in the morning doesn’t qualify?

  You tell me. I didn’t think you were on duty tonight.

  I’m not. But I’ve got so I can’t sleep unless the sun’s up. I thought I’d come look in on the customers.

  George stares at her a long moment, longer than he needs to, in the dim light of the ward. I should have noticed, he says, you’re not wearing the uniform. Then he leans to the side in order to look past her and into the corridor. Is Margaret out there?

  She’s sleeping in our spare room. She needs the rest. I sneaked out past her.

  Well, you accomplished what our kids could never do.

  Adeline Witt has pulled on a cardigan sweater over the sleeveless dress she was wearing earlier in the evening. Temperature’s dropping, she says. I guess our warm weather was too good to last.

  It never does.

  Adeline steps closer to the bed. How’s that hand tonight? Keeping you awake?

  No more than the grunting and groaning coming from the old gentleman over there. He might be sound asleep, but he sounds like he’s hard at work.

  Hard at work he is, says Adeline. That’s Mr. Amos Banter. Ninety-four years old. Amos says he can remember when soldiers came home from the Civil War. I doubt old Amos will leave this building under his own power.

  So, are his efforts to stay in this world or get out of it?

  That you would even ask that question, Mr. Blackledge, says a hell of a lot about your character. Now scooch over, she says, and let’s bring that bottle back out. I need a little whiskey heat before I head out in the cold.

  The bed is narrow and its rail is up on one side. George Blackledge doesn’t have much room to maneuver and accommodate Adeline Witt’s request. Or does his reluctance have less to do with the bed’s confines and more to do with the fact that since he married Margaret Mann, no females but his wife and daughter have dented a mattress at his side?

  But the way Adeline eases herself onto the bed has nothing to do with intimacy and everything to do with fatigue. This is a woman whose feet ache at two o’clock in the morning and at two o’clock in the afternoon, and to sit here, closer to George’s knees than his shoulder, saves her the steps required to walk around the bed to the chair on the other side.

  It is Adeline who brings the bottle of Old Crow out of the cabinet. A water glass, half full, rests on the top of the cabinet, and she pours a little whiskey into the glass and drinks off water and whiskey without pause. She holds the bottle out toward George and sloshes the liquid back and forth. Still not an emergency for you? she asks.

  Not yet.

  She puts the bottle away and says, I wouldn’t be wrong, would I, Mr. Blackledge, if I marked you for a man who likes to get right up close to temptation and then step back?

  He says nothing.

  Adeline leans toward George, and with a tender practiced motion she lifts his injured hand. How’s that bandage doing? You haven’t sprung a leak, have you?

  Why do I think, he says, that you came here for some reason other than to look at my bandages?

  She brings her face close to his hand as if she needs to engage a sense other than sight—smell, perhaps, or taste—to diagnose this man’s condition. If the hand’s bothering you, she says, I can get you something for the pain.

  You didn’t answer my question.

  Adeline stares into the empty glass, tilting and rotating it in her hand. She brings the glass to her lips and holds it there long enough for any drop of water and whiskey to slide into her mouth. The taciturnity of these people . . . silence held for so long it becomes almost a material thing, its weight increasing until finally it cannot be borne . . .

  Then Adeline says, I like your wife.

  All right.

  I like her but I don’t understand her. Now, maybe that’s my failing. When it comes to grandchildren, I’m more afraid that one will be unloaded on me than I am of never seeing one again. To go to the lengths she’s willing to go to—

  You’re not Margaret Blackledge.

  No, sir, I’m not. And I wouldn’t want to see something happen to her.

  George sits up straighter. What’s that supposed to mean?

  Adeline takes another look into the glass before putting it down. She’s treating herself pretty rough over what happened to you. It’s all her fault, to hear her say it. You could go easy on her.

  That’s your advice, is it?

  I know. It didn’t come asked for. Adeline stands and snugs that cardigan tighter on her bare shoulders. Sometimes, she says, the patient has an easier time of it than the one standing at the bedside.

  Does that apply to Mr. Banter over there?

  Am
os is going it alone.

  George Blackledge nods. Something to be said for that.

  Somewhere a distant telephone rings, and though its answer is not the responsibility of either of these people, they wait and listen. After two rings the imagination provides reasons for the call. My little girl has the croup . . . My husband’s stomach ache is getting so bad he can’t hardly stand it . . . After three rings the sound seems to come closer . . . The fever, the pain, the spots of blood . . . Four rings . . . Can I give her something? Anything? Five rings, six . . . Can you send an ambulance? The ringing stops, and George and Adeline breathe easier.

  But perhaps the sound of that telephone has brought Adeline back to her profession. She presses the back of her hand to George’s forehead. I believe you have a fever. Did they give you something for that?

  I’m fine, he says and leans away from her touch.

  As long as you can get that bottle open on your own, I suppose you are. Good night, Mr. Blackledge. Get some sleep if you can. I’ll see you tomorrow. Or later today, I should say.

  Not only did Adeline Witt not wear her white nurse’s uniform for this middle-of-the-night visit, she didn’t wear the rubber-soled white shoes she wore earlier in the day. George can hear her leather heels tock-tocking all the way down the hall. It’s a sound he didn’t hear when she approached, but then the human ear is tuned differently for departures than arrivals, as anyone who listens to train whistles knows.

  34.

  BOTH GEORGE AND HOMER SAY NO TO THE OFFER OF A drink.

  Oh come now, says Adeline. You both know you want one. Let’s not put on airs.

  Fine, Homer says, as if he’s only grudgingly giving in to another’s argument. But more water than usual.

  Mr. Blackledge?

  George waves her off again.

  I hate to drink alone, says Homer. I’ll do it but I hate to.

  Don’t wait on me, George says.

  The men are sitting at a table in the Witts’ dining room, while their wives move back and forth from the kitchen, finishing the preparations for lunch.

  The meal set out is by and for people whose only confident judgment about food is based on its quantity. Accordingly, on the table are both bread-and-butter and dill pickles, carrot and celery sticks, and sliced tomatoes—the last of the season; slices of jellied roast beef and summer sausage, a block of yellow cheese, cottage cheese, and hard-boiled eggs; soda crackers, slices of white bread, and butter; glasses of cold milk. On the stove a saucepan of vegetable soup simmers; a pot of fresh coffee percolates; in the refrigerator tapioca pudding cools until it’s time for dessert; on the cupboard a box of gingersnaps waits to be set out with the coffee. The good silver. Cloth napkins.

  You didn’t have to go to all this fuss, Margaret says to Adeline. And on your day off.

  You’d do the same if Homer and I were in your town.

  Would I? I hope so but I don’t know . . . I hardly dare be sure of any of the things I once believed.

  Adeline waves a dish towel in the air as if to ward off this line of foolish talk. I wish you’d reconsider, she says, and spend another night here before you head for home.

  It’s kind of you to offer, but George says he needs to sleep in his own bed.

  He still looks peaked, if you ask me.

  Margaret steps close to Adeline and says softly, If those Weboys were looking for a way to take all the air out of him, they sure as hell succeeded. I’ve never seen him like this. And this is a man who’s pushed his way past some hard moments in his life. But now he seems off somewhere on his own, and he can’t see or hear the rest of us.

  Adeline nods in understanding. He’s trying to work out how he’s going to keep on being the man he’s always been. And you know what? He’s not going to be. But you just be patient. He’ll figure it all out in time.

  No one in this town needs to hear the report that plays hourly on KGLD lamenting the end of the brief span of Indian summer weather. And no one is surprised to see a few flakes of snow mixed with the day’s cold, slanting rain. No one in this part of the country needs to be told what’s on the way or what must end. Nor does anyone need to be told what preparations must be made. The windows on the Witt home still wear their summer screens, and the wind blows hard enough that, on the north side of the house, raindrops are pushed through the screens and streak the glass.

  In the dining room all the talk comes from Homer. The business with the hatchet, he says in his high, pinched voice, nodding in the direction of George’s swaddled hand, is a new one. But tales about the wild Weboys and their goddamn vicious ways have been going around for years—usually stopping short of murder, but there’s some argument on that point. You were at their place—you probably caught on that not all those cars scattered around are registered in the Weboy name. Some of them they probably stole outright, others they bought from someone else who stole them. One of the stories I heard had them cutting the nuts off a Livingston man who cheated them on a car deal. The Weboys can pull any kind of shenanigan they’ve a mind to, but anyone tries to turn the tables on them, they’re squawking and ready to have their revenge. But I’ve come up with an idea I’d like to run by you.

  George listens with the impassive expression of a man who’s tried hard to learn the forbearance necessary to be around people who talk too much.

  Homer, however, doesn’t need permission to continue. He swirls his whiskey, takes a small swallow, then puts the glass down carefully. What do you say we wait until things settle down a bit for you—again he points nonchalantly toward George’s injured hand—and then you come back here? We’ll round up a few fellows who’d like nothing better than to give the Weboys a taste of their own medicine.

  It’s obvious that George’s fingerless hand bothers him, because he keeps it raised and off to the side as if he can’t stand to subject it to anything more than air flowing across the bandage. And what would we do? he asks, his voice as flat as the tabletop.

  Do? Hell if I know. Make a raid on the Weboy place. Beat the hell out of those boys. Throw a scare into them once and for all.

  These fellows you mention. Tough customers, are they?

  They could take care of those Weboys.

  And how about the mother?

  Maybe we’ll take the women along. Homer laughs, a sound like a doll’s squeak. I believe their imaginations could come up with a punishment for Blanche.

  Like rip her grandchild away from her?

  Do what?

  George flicks his question away as if it were a crumb. He says, It was the uncle wielded the hatchet. Bill Weboy.

  That sonofabitch. We’ll come up with something special for him. I tell you, when he showed up here last night I should have got out my twelve-gauge. I could have pulled the trigger on that bastard and spared the world a lot of trouble and grief.

  He was here? George presses his good hand down on the table as if his question pertained to the very place where he’s sitting.

  Margaret didn’t tell you?

  She did not.

  Huh. Yeah, he came walking up the street like this was his neighborhood and he was out for his nightly constitutional. Homer raises his watered-down whiskey to his lips and takes another carefully rationed sip. I can’t say we put the run on him exactly, he continues, but we sure as hell made it plain he wasn’t welcome.

  Not like he gives a good goddamn about that.

  Say this for the Weboys—they aren’t lacking for gall.

  Was he alone? asks George.

  Oh hell no. He had a carload with him.

  Donnie with them?

  I couldn’t tell. Does it matter? He’s with them whether he’s with them or not. The Weboys are so damn tight you couldn’t fit a shim between them.

  Just wondering, says George, if Donnie always has someone else ready to do his dirty work for him.

  That mother of his has been cleaning up his messes since he was a kid. Both his and his brothers’.

  Margaret and Adeline enter t
he dining room. Oh please, Margaret says, no more of the Weboys.

  Homer laughs his high, strangled laugh. Just like that? Snap your fingers and no more Weboys?

  I heard, says George, they paid a visit last night. He looks back and forth from one woman to the other but his look of accusation lingers longest on Adeline.

  Can’t we not talk about them for the rest of the day? pleads Margaret.

  So the talk turns away from the Weboy clan as if that subject could be avoided like a stretch of bad road. Soon it’s difficult to imagine that anyone at this table is grieving, defeated, exhausted, or maimed, though one of the group says little, no matter whether the topic is roof shingling (which Homer Witt did back in June), soldiers fighting in Korea (where U.S. fortunes have not fared well recently), or seasons shifting (the Witts saw their last snow in April, the Blackledges in June). No, there’s not a reason in the world to believe that anyone sitting at this table is less than whole. Unless Margaret Blackledge reaching over and cutting her husband’s food into bite-size chunks is likely to bring such a thought to mind. Or perhaps something out of the ordinary is suggested when the Blackledges stand at the front door and say their thank-yous and good-byes and make their promises to stay in touch, and Adeline reaches out for an actual touch. I still think, she says, and once again the back of her hand approaches George’s forehead, you might be running a fever. But he merely leans away from her touch and repeats his two o’clock in the morning lie. I’m fine.

  35.

  THEY ARE BARELY OUTSIDE GLADSTONE’S CITY LIMITS when George says, You should have told me the uncle showed up last night.

  I intended to. The wipers keep the windshield clear but Margaret still grips the steering wheel with both hands and squints out at the highway.

  When?

  Oh, I don’t know. Someday. Soon.

  George leans against the passenger door, his injured hand held aloft and his face against the cool window glass. His hat is beside him on the car seat. He says, Not soon enough.