by Larry Watson
George pushes himself up to a sitting position. She watches the process carefully. You know, she says, I was thinking earlier about all the smiling folks we’ve met since we crossed over into the state. And how you can’t trust a one of them. The sober-sided ones, on the other hand, like your friend Nevelsen, seem a pretty steady bunch. Adeline, certainly. That young doctor whose name I can never remember—
Wyatt.
That’s right. Wyatt. But then we arrive here and young Mr. Dragswolf can’t seem to wipe that grin off his face. And I’d count him among the trustworthy ones, wouldn’t you?
Unless he’s out there right now plotting a way to do us in.
George pats his shirt pocket for his cigarettes.
I put them up here, says Margaret and takes the pack of Lucky Strikes from the top of Alton Dragswolf’s three-drawer dresser. When I look around this place, she says, though her eyes are fixed on the cigarette pack, and I see the life Mr. Dragswolf has made for himself, I can imagine James doing something like this. Living by himself on his own corner of the homestead, running a small string of horses—
Don’t. He barks out that command like he’s training an animal. But then his voice lowers. The boy’s dead and buried. Do yourself some good and leave off that line of thinking.
Is that what you do, George? You don’t allow yourself to even think about your son?
That’d make about as much sense as poking at the holes where my fingers used to be.
You think love’s like a wound, George? You let it scab over, then forget about it?
I don’t believe in seeing our son where he can’t be. And I don’t see anything of him in Alton Dragswolf. Who strikes me as more than a little strange.
Oh, he means well. Finally she puts the cigarette between George’s lips and strikes a match for him. She looks around the shack, and when she sees a battered tin ashtray on the kitchen table she retrieves it and places it alongside her husband. He’s probably just lost track of things a bit, living out here. As near as I can tell, there isn’t a clock in the place.
Another one of your theories? George says. Could be.
We could drive off, you know. I could write him a note and tell him we headed for home. Maybe leave him a few dollars for his trouble. And we could be back in Dalton in a few hours.
I’m not ready.
You’re not ready? What does that mean? You’re not ready . . .
I’m not ready to go home.
Oh, George. She presses her hands to her face. Please. You never wanted to leave in the first place. How can you not be ready to go back? When she brings her hands down, her eyes are glittering with unspilled tears. Please.
For an answer he turns his head away and blows a stream of smoke toward the towel-covered window.
Margaret Blackledge takes the cigarette from her husband. She crushes it out and puts the ashtray on top of the dresser. Move over, you old bag of bones. She climbs into the bed and presses the length of her body along George’s. She rests her chin on his chest and when she does, the tremor stops, though perhaps some of her trembling enters him. She slips her hand inside his shirt, popping open one of the snaps in the process. Do you want to go the other way? she asks. We could do that. The car is still packed with supplies. We could head west . . . just drive and see where we land. See an ocean, maybe. Or we could go north . . . see if your friend will let us bunk down in his jail again.
I told you. I’m done traveling.
You’re done traveling. What does that mean, George? Look where we are. We can’t stay here. We don’t belong here. Her hand moves around on his chest as if she’s probing for a heartbeat.
George keeps staring off in the direction of the window. The October sun sets early and today it hasn’t even made an appearance. On the other side of the towel and the glass, the day is all but done.
George? You’re not planning to die on me, are you?
With that hand inside his shirt she grabs a tuft of his chest hair and pulls hard. He flinches. Are you, George?
He turns slowly toward her and with the hand that has all its fingers he lifts her head tenderly toward his own. A man doesn’t die from losing a few fingers, he says. I heard you say so myself.
38.
ALTON DRAGSWOLF DID NOT CATCH ANY FISH, BUT Margaret prepares supper anyway. She has brought groceries from the car—Spam, potatoes for frying, a can of creamed corn, a jar of applesauce—because, she insisted, it wouldn’t be right for them to eat Alton’s food.
While she works at the cookstove, Alton and George sit at the kitchen table, George sipping whiskey from a coffee cup and smoking. Since he has found a way to strike matches with one hand, he no longer asks his wife to light his cigarettes for him. He pins the matchbook to the table, folds a match in half, and rasps it into flame with his thumb. Alton, who neither drinks nor smokes, deals poker hands to himself from a limp, dog-eared deck of cards.
As Margaret sets the table, she says to Alton, I hope you don’t mind, but I was admiring your fancy buckskins in there.
I don’t mind. But they ain’t mine. They’re my uncle’s. He don’t miss many powwows.
They’re simply beautiful.
Alton says, He keeps them here so’s his wife don’t take it and sell them. Myself, I ain’t much for dancing.
Two kerosene lamps keep at bay the darkness gathered at each end of the shack. The bracket lamp on the wall next to the door has a bulbous chimney and casts a wide, diffuse glow. The lamp on the table has a narrow chimney and its light is so intense it seems as if its purpose were to reveal the character of any man or woman sitting nearby. Its flame is not bright enough, however, to keep the deep-cut features of George Blackledge’s face from looking like shadows.
Margaret brings the skillet to the table but George puts his hand over his plate. Not for me, he says.
You need to eat something, she says.
Maybe a little applesauce.
That’s not enough for you, she says, but she moves on to Alton.
Put it all on here, says Alton. I’m hungry enough to eat the asshole out of a dead skunk.
She heaps his plate with fried potatoes and thick slabs of Spam. I’ll pass on the corn, he says. Me and vegetables don’t agree.
Alton pours ketchup onto his meat and potatoes and then shakes salt and pepper liberally over both.
Margaret Blackledge spoons applesauce into a bowl and sets it before her husband, but he pushes it away. She sits demurely at George’s side. In spite of insisting that George eat, she has put nothing on her own plate.
You mentioned your uncle, Margaret says. Do you have other family around here?
His mouth full, Alton merely shakes his head.
This isn’t the land of your ancestors? Margaret smiles politely.
Nah. Just mine. The land and the house both.
Northern Montana’s Blackfoot country, isn’t it? asks George.
I guess. But I ain’t Blackfeet.
I thought—
I was making a joke. You know, like I had two feet. And they was both black. But I thought you knew. I like fishing too much to be a Blackfeet. They ain’t much for fishing, you know. Too damn superstitious or something. Nah, I’m Arikara and Hidatsa. My folks were, anyway. From North Dakota. But they’re both dead.
Oh, Alton, I’m sorry, Margaret says. Then she adds brightly, We’re from North Dakota. She moves the bowl of applesauce back in front of George.
Yeah, I seen your license plates that first day. Are there any more potatoes?
Margaret rises and goes back to the stove. So, Margaret says, this isn’t where you’re from, Alton?
Alton Dragswolf shrugs. It’s just where I am.
She scrapes the remaining potatoes onto his plate and Alton proceeds to cover them once again with ketchup, salt, and pepper.
There’s nothing wrong with your appetite, Mr. Dragswolf.
He moves the potatoes to his mouth with a spoon. Between mouthfuls, Alton says, My aunt used to call me Bug
because I like potatoes so much. You know, like potato bug. That was before she got so damn mean she wouldn’t call me anything.
I’m sorry to hear that.
Doesn’t bother me. I don’t have to live with her.
Or anyone else, says George.
Or anyone else. You bet. He pushes himself back from the table. I like the way you fix potatoes, he says to Margaret. Instead of slicing them, I usually cut them up in little squares and pyramids and then if I have an onion I chop it up and fry it in there too. But this way is good. Hey, do you want dessert? Look in that drawer there.
Margaret opens a drawer near the sink and finds it full of packages of Switzer’s licorice. Mr. Dragswolf, you have a sweet tooth.
Yeah, and before long it’ll probably be my only one, the way the others are rotting away. Alton clacks his teeth together. That’s the only bad thing about living out here—what if I run out of licorice?
Neither George nor Margaret want any of the candy but Alton tears open the cellophane package eagerly and soon has its entire contents in his mouth. Sort of like chewing tobacco, he says, his tongue working clumsily around the black wad. Especially if I spit.
Not indoors, Alton.
Margaret pumps enough water into a large pot to do the dishes and still have plenty for all of them to wash up for the evening. She lifts the kettle onto the back boiler burner and feeds another log into the woodbox. While she works, the men sit silently at the table, Alton with his licorice and his playing cards, George with his cigarettes and his whiskey.
Finally George Blackledge says to Alton, Do you work?
Not like you mean, answers Alton. But you try rounding up enough wood around these parts to get through a winter. Or try casting a line all day into water where there ain’t no fish. You’ll find out what real work is. Besides, he says and tears off another strip of licorice, I have to be available in case I get houseguests.
Behind them Margaret laughs. Touché!
What do you do for money? asks George.
I got some insurance when my folks died. That’s how I bought this place.
So you’re a man of independent means.
I get by. And I don’t hurt nobody doing it. How about you? What do you do to earn a dollar?
George inhales deeply but it’s only oxygen that puffs up his chest. I hold up boards for another man to hammer.
Hey, that’s work I could maybe handle! Alton crawls his fingers across the table until they’re almost touching George’s bandaged hand. Can you do it, Alton asks, without fingers?
I don’t know. I’ll have to find out.
I’d use it for an excuse. Sorry! I can’t hold up no more boards! Get yourself another man!
They probably will get another man. If they haven’t already.
Margaret throws the dish towel over her shoulder and approaches the table. She puts her arms around her husband’s neck. Mr. Blackledge, she informs Alton, was once a sheriff.
Alton Dragswolf leans back in his chair as though he needs to get a better look at George. No shit? He turns his thumbs and index fingers into blazing six-shooters. Blum, blam, blam! So were you fast on the draw? A dead-eye shot?
George stubs out his cigarette. I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.
Did you ever shoot anybody?
Nope.
Well, did you ever shoot and miss?
No. I never pointed a gun at anyone. George picks up his pack of cigarettes, then puts it down again with a sigh. Striking a match is still a complicated business. Most sheriffs, George says, do a hell of a lot more typing than shooting.
Is that what you’d say when you were running for office? I’m the best damn typer in the county?
Not the best . . .
Of course, no more typing for you, says Alton as, with all ten fingers, he mimics tapping away at a keyboard.
No, not for me.
Too bad. Because that beats hell out of holding up a board for another man to pound, don’t it?
By this much, George says and holds up his bandaged hand. He wears a look of momentary satisfaction, as if he’s finally found the use to which he can put that span of air between thumb and little finger.
...
Alton insists that the Blackledges take his bed for the night, and in turn Margaret helps him make up a pallet on the floor on the other end of the shack.
When Margaret wishes him good night, she tells him again how grateful they are for his hospitality.
I invited you, Alton says shyly. You came. Stay as long as you like.
Perhaps it is not only the sincerity in Alton Dragswolf’s voice but also a light in his eyes that says he too is grateful that makes Margaret do what she does. She puts her arms around him and kisses him on the cheek. You know what I wish, Alton? I wish my grandson would grow up to be like you.
Yeah? Well, I bet he won’t—wish that, I mean.
...
Later, when Margaret lies in bed with her leg thrown across her husband and she can hear from his breathing that he’s still awake, she whispers, I have an idea, George.
A long moment passes before he says, Let’s hear it.
Now, let me finish before you make fun of me. And if you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything—not that you’ll have a problem in that regard. Sleep on it, if need be.
Let’s hear it.
Why don’t we move here? And I don’t mean to Gladstone. I mean right here. In with Alton. He’d be glad of the company, I bet. And the help. I could do the cooking. You’d help him expand the place. We could put another room on the backside of the kitchen—
Let me guess: I’d hold up the boards and he’d drive the nails.
Stop it, George. We’d be close enough to Gladstone that I could see Mrs. Witt from time to time. I swear, after only a few days she’s become more of a friend to me than any woman I’ve ever known. And Jimmy—
I should have known. Jimmy.
You said you’d let me finish.
You’re finished now. Jesus Christ, woman. When will you stop torturing yourself? So we move in here with this Indian kid and we buy him his licorice or whatever the hell your plan is. Then what? You drive into town every day and park outside Jimmy’s school? Hang out by the playground and try to catch a glimpse of him? Stand across the street from Montgomery Ward and see if he comes with his uncle or his stepfather to pick up Lorna? My God, Margaret!
Keep your voice down. You’ll wake Alton.
Maybe we should wake him. George’s anger has not cooled by a degree but his voice softens. Let him hear what a crazy goddamn idea is churning through that brain of yours. Maybe even a chucklehead like Alton Dragswolf can make you see things clear.
All right, George.
A few hours ago you were ready to head off to California if that was what I wanted. Now you want to leave behind all the life you’ve ever known to live in a little shack in a valley without so much as a real road leading in or out.
I said, all right.
If husbands and wives know anything, it is when the pursuit of argument is futile. They might go on, but they know.
Margaret Blackledge turns away from her husband. She lies on the side of the bed closest to the wall and she reaches out now and places her palm against the rough wood as if she feared its encroachment. After James died she could keep her eyes dry throughout the day by filling every hour with one chore after another. But if all that work failed to exhaust her, the night would be another matter. As she and George lay in bed together, if so much as a single sob got away from her, he would rise, even if he’d been sound asleep, and go sit in his rocking chair in the parlor. Was it a calculation on his part? Before long her mother-grief would diminish, if only by a degree, replaced by the wife-worry of when her husband would return to her side. When the mattress sagged again under his weight, they would both sleep at last.
39.
WHEN MARGARET WAKES, THE DARKNESS IN THE shack is so complete it seems to have substance, as if night had wrapped ev
ery sleeper in a caul. She reaches out her hand and touches empty space where George’s body had been.
Go back to sleep. The voice comes from above her and then her eyes penetrate this membrane of gloom. It’s George and he’s standing beside the bed. He has pulled on his jeans and his shirt but his belt is not buckled and the shirt not snapped. I’m going out to the privy.
Margaret starts to get out of bed.
Lie down, he commands her. When I need someone to wipe my ass I’ll let you know. I think I can manage to take a piss on my own. Jesus.
Before she climbed into bed for the night, Margaret took a last look outside. Fog no higher than a man’s waist clung like smoke to the valley floor. Now when George opens the door she feels the cooler air and in her fatigue it seems as if the fog itself were entering and winding its way back to her and then as though the fog were indistinguishable from the haze that sleep brings.
...
Who can say what wakes a wife and tells her that the space beside her has been vacant for too long? The feel of absence? The sounds that don’t fit the hour?
The whine of a car’s engine, as it has a hill to climb and fog to struggle through.
The whir of a partridge, its nest in the brush disturbed by a car’s headlights.
The sheet where he lay is cool. And damp, as if with fever sweat.
The spark that flies between the synapses of the long-married travels too far and fires too hard and in effect says, He’s gone.
Margaret rushes to the door and throws it open in time to see the Hudson climbing the road and almost to the top of the bluff, free of the low-lying fog, its taillights tingeing pink the dust that billows behind the car.
Oh God, oh my God. Oh George. These words she barely whispers. These she shouts: George! George! Stop!
Then Alton Dragswolf wakes. Something’s not right. A door open? A woman calling out? He crawls out of his blankets, pushes himself to his feet, and makes his way to the open door.
He arrives in time to see Margaret Blackledge running from his shack and futilely chasing a car that labors up the hill, bouncing and tilting over the rocks and ruts, its engine whining with effort.
