The Late Child

by Larry McMurtry

  “There’s a little boy who wants a puppy,” Neddie said.

  “I favor small puppies over large puppies,” Pat said. “Eddie might be right. That little dog might be an orphan. It was sitting there looking hungry, when we came up.”

  “Pat, don’t get his hopes up,” Harmony said. “It probably belongs to some little Indian family.”

  But in a second Eddie came racing back, his face alight.

  “It’s an orphan, Mom,” he said. “Those women have never seen it before. They think somebody put it out on the road.”

  “Eddie, are you telling me the truth?” Harmony asked.

  Eddie’s face immediately fell.

  “You don’t want me to have it, do you?” he said. “You think I made up a story.”

  “No, I don’t, Eddie,” Harmony said, quickly. She felt ashamed of herself. “It just seems odd it was here in the village if it doesn’t belong to somebody.”

  “A bad person put it out on the road,” Eddie said. “It’s an orphan dog. Why can’t we take it, Mom? It isn’t very big.”

  Harmony looked at the two Hopi girls. They had finished hanging up their wash and were watching Eddie and the little dog.

  “Go ask them, Neddie,” Harmony said.

  “Why can’t you go ask them, Mom?” Eddie asked. “It would be my dog and your dog if you let me keep it.”

  “I would go ask them, Eddie, but I’m afraid to get out of the car,” Harmony said.

  “Why, Mom?” Eddie asked, surprised. “It’s perfectly safe here. It’s just a little bit windy.”

  Harmony didn’t say anything. She knew her fear was foolish; it embarrassed her that she had it. But she did have it.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Harmony said. “I know I shouldn’t be scared, but I’m still scared.”

  The two young Hopi women came walking in their direction, carrying their empty laundry basket.

  “Hi,” Eddie said, as they were passing the car.

  The Hopi women gave him the hint of a smile, but they kept walking.

  “Mom, ask them … Please ask them,” Eddie said. “The puppy might be an orphan and he might die if we leave him.”

  Harmony knew she had to do something—her son was almost in tears. She managed to open the door and get out, for a moment—she held on to the door.

  “Excuse me,” she said, to the young Hopi women. “My son really likes this dog. Can you tell me if it belongs to someone here?”

  The young women stopped. They looked very shy, now that they had been addressed by an adult. They didn’t seem to want to raise their eyes, but finally the older girl looked up at Harmony.

  “That dog just showed up today,” she said. “He don’t belong to nobody here.”

  Eddie’s face lit up again. “See, Mom—it’s just what I told you!” he said.

  “Your little boy can have him, if he wants him,” the girl said. “Somebody put him out on the road.”

  “Thank you,” Harmony said, getting back in the car.

  The young women gave Eddie another shy smile.

  “I’ll take very good care of him,” Eddie told them. He picked the little dog up in his arms and let him lick his face.

  “What do you think, Neddie?” Harmony asked.

  “I think Eddie’s got a puppy,” Neddie said.

  8.

  No sooner had the car started than the little brown dog put his head on Eddie’s lap and went to sleep. Eddie carefully stroked his head.

  “I think he’s tired from being an orphan,” Eddie said.

  “What will you name him, Eddie?” Pat asked.

  “I don’t know,” Eddie said. “What do you think, Aunt Neddie?”

  “I’d name him Buster,” Neddie said. “He looks like a Buster to me.”

  “What do you think, Mom?” Eddie said. “What should his name be?”

  “I’m just glad he came to live with us, Eddie,” Harmony said. “Maybe you can think of a name while he’s asleep.”

  Seeing the look of happiness on Eddie’s face as he stroked the little dog made her want to cry. She had intended for months to take Eddie to the pound and get him a puppy, but she had let Jimmy Bangor talk her out of it. Jimmy’s concern had been the wall-to-wall. Now Jimmy was gone and the wall-to-wall was bloodied to an extent he wouldn’t have been able to live with anyway. Harmony felt guilty for having let a not-so-good boyfriend persuade her to deny her son a puppy for six months.

  “Should his name be Jacques?” Eddie asked.

  “No, it’s an American dog,” Pat said. “Why should it have to carry around a stupid French name?”

  “Why do you think Jacques is a stupid name?” Eddie asked, regarding his aunt sternly. “Haven’t you heard of Jacques Cousteau?”

  “Sure, I’ve heard of him, but that’s no reason to name a dog after him,” Pat said.

  “You can name him Jacques if you want to, Eddie,” Harmony said. “He’s your dog.”

  “No, he’s his own dog,” Eddie said. “He’s just my companion.”

  They dipped and rose, dipped and rose, as the road wound to Second Mesa and then First Mesa. Eddie pulled the little dog into his lap and soon went to sleep himself. Harmony made herself look straight ahead, at the road. She didn’t want to look south, into the great space that flowed on and on. The little Hopi villages they passed through looked very poor, except for the schools, which all looked new and well equipped.

  “Why do people live here?” Pat asked. “This is a whole lot bleaker than the Oklahoma panhandle.”

  They passed many Hopi, men and women, little girls, high school boys, walking along the rocky shoulders of the road.

  “They must not make enough cars, in Arizona,” Pat said.

  “I feel better, now that Eddie has a dog,” Neddie said. “You need to get a grip on yourself, Harmony. Eddie was upset that you didn’t get out of the car and look at the scenery. He was afraid you were having a breakdown.”

  “He was right,” Harmony said. “When do you think we’ll get to Oklahoma?”

  “Honey, we’ve barely started,” Neddie said. “It’ll be a couple more days before we hit Tarwater.”

  “Are there any nice men at home?” Harmony asked. “Maybe it’s a mistake for me to move there.”

  “It’s a little late for that kind of thinking,” Pat said. “All your earthly possessions are in the trailer.”

  “Maybe we should just turn around and go back to Las Vegas,” Harmony said. She felt her spirits sinking to such a low point that it was beginning to be hard to breathe. It seemed insane that she was in a car, going up and down a narrow, dippy road through an Indian reservation, with an emptiness to the south so vast that it looked as if it could swallow the world. She was driving away from the only town she had ever felt at home in, to go to a place she hadn’t lived since she was sixteen. It was all because Pepper was gone. She had lost her mind when she heard the news and now was floating off in a direction that was likely to be the wrong direction. Why hadn’t she just stayed where she was? Her sisters suddenly seemed like aliens to her, women from another world, who knew nothing of the casinos and the shows that had kept life interesting for her, for so many years.

  “You never have to be lonely, if you have the casinos,” she said. “There are always people in the casinos.”

  “I’m loneliest when I wake up,” Pat said. “I doubt it would be any different if I slept in a casino. I’d still wake up lonely.”

  “Does it happen if you’re with guys?” Harmony asked, remembering all the men she had awakened with, in her lifetime with men. Many times she would wake up hopeful, only to have the man she was with wake up surly and spoil her hopefulness, sometimes for the whole day.

  Denny, the criminal, had been particularly bad about that. If she so much as smiled at him when he wasn’t in the mood for a smile he would look as if he wanted to slug her, and, once or twice, he had slugged her, over nothing at all, other than a look on her face that he didn’t like.

 
“You didn’t answer my question about the guys,” Harmony said.

  “It depends on the guy,” Pat said. “There’s guys I’d just as soon not wake up in the same county with, and then there’s the sweet ones you can’t get enough of.”

  “I wonder if I would have been happier if I’d been a sheepherder,” Harmony said. “I wonder if that would have been better than the casinos.”

  “Not for your complexion, it wouldn’t have,” Pat said.

  Then Harmony seemed to stop thinking for a while. Her mind became as spacey as the great space beyond the mesa. They drove for two hours, Eddie and his little dog sound asleep. They went beyond the mesas of the Hopi onto a long plateau, with great white clouds the size of battleships floating above it.

  “I’ve been in North Dakota,” Pat said, apropos of nothing. “I wouldn’t want to live there. Not enough to do.”

  They stopped for gasoline in a town called Chinle. Harmony got out to fill their tank and check the oil—she always used self-serve.

  A cheerful Indian teenager in the office took her money and offered her a coupon in return.

  “Going to the canyon?” he asked.

  “Oh, the Grand Canyon—no, we’ve already been,” Harmony said.

  The boy was nice-looking; his black hair was neatly combed.

  “No, our canyon,” he said. “The Canyon de Chelly. It is not as big as the Grand Canyon,” he said.

  “Well, I guess since we’ve seen the biggest we might as well keep rolling,” Harmony said.

  The Indian boy smiled. “You should see our canyon,” he said. “It’s the place where the world began. It’s only three miles from here.

  “Our canyon is the most beautiful canyon in the world,” the boy added.

  “Okay, maybe we’ll go,” Harmony said. She didn’t want to be impolite to such a nice young man. She didn’t really want to see any more canyons, though—she was afraid she might get the feeling she had had on Third Mesa.

  The nice young Indian boy came out to clean their windshield, a task Harmony had neglected. Eddie and his dog were awake. When the boy saw that Eddie’s dog didn’t have a leash, and couldn’t be let out to go to the bathroom without the risk of being run over, he quickly produced a piece of twine and made the little dog a temporary leash.

  “I hope you go see the canyon,” he said, as he was finishing the windshield.

  “Don’t tell me we’ve gone in a circle and come back to the Grand Canyon,” Pat said. “If we have I’ll shoot myself.”

  “It isn’t the Grand Canyon, Pat, it’s a canyon where the world began,” Harmony said.

  Eddie and his dog had just scrambled back in the car.

  “I want to go there at once, Mom,” Eddie said.

  “Oh, Eddie, why?” Harmony said. “We already saw the Grand Canyon and it’s bigger.”

  “Well, I didn’t like the Grand Canyon because it wasn’t yellow,” Eddie said. “And it wasn’t the place where the world began, anyway.”

  “Neither is this one,” Neddie said. “God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh.”

  “Eddie doesn’t believe in the Bible, Neddie,” Harmony said, annoyed that the conversation had veered around to religion.

  “But I like Bible stories, sometimes,” Eddie said. “It’s okay that they didn’t know whales only eat plankton.”

  “Neddie don’t even believe that stuff about the six days, herself,” Pat said. “If God did make the world in only six days, then no wonder it’s so fucked up.”

  “Pat, please watch your language,” Harmony said. “Eddie doesn’t need to be hearing the f word every minute.”

  “Then I hope he wears earplugs when your boyfriends are around,” Pat said. “Most of the ones I’ve met ain’t interested in anything except the f word and the f thing.”

  Harmony knew there was some justice in the remark.

  “I want to see the canyon anyway,” Eddie insisted. “It might be where the world began.”

  “Okay, we’ll just run over and take a peek,” Neddie said.

  On the narrow road south, to the first look-over into the Canyon de Chelly, Eddie suddenly brightened.

  “I know what I’ll name my dog,” he said. “I’ll name him Iggy, after Iggy Pop.”

  “Eddie, that’s a perfect name,” Harmony said.

  “I guess so, if you happen to be one of the lucky millions who know who Iggy Pop is,” Neddie said. “I ain’t among the elect.”

  “No, and you won’t be going to heaven, either,” Pat said. “No woman who lusts after her own brother-in-law has a chance of getting in heaven.”

  “Shut up,” Neddie said. “That’s enough about that subject.”

  “Got your goat, didn’t I?” Pat said.

  “Pat, she has to drive,” Harmony said. “She doesn’t know the road, either.”

  “What’s that got to do with heaven?” Pat asked.

  “You won’t be going there either—I wouldn’t bring it up, if I was you,” Neddie said.

  “I may not go to heaven but at least I can say I wasn’t frustrated while I was alive,” Pat said.

  The sun was shining brightly and the wind had died. Harmony decided she owed it to Eddie to at least take a peek into the canyon where the world began. They stopped at the first overlook and walked a short distance, over some rocks, to look into the canyon.

  The moment she looked into the depths of the canyon Harmony felt her heart growing still. They went from look-over to look-over and at each one she felt the stillness growing in her. The pain was still there, but it wasn’t swirling. The pain was cold inside her, like a crystal, but at least it wasn’t swirling.

  “Wow, Mom, I like this canyon,” Eddie said.

  Iggy liked it too. He raced around, chasing small ground squirrels, barking loudly.

  “He’s going to be sad, if he doesn’t catch one soon,” Eddie said. “I wish one would let him catch it. I don’t think he would bite it very hard.”

  Pat and Neddie were silenced by the majesty of the Canyon de Chelly. They had forgotten their quarrel. They held on to one another whenever they approached the edge of the canyon.

  “Look, there’s people down in it,” Pat said. “I see a corn patch, and some sheep.”

  “I’m glad the world began here,” Eddie said, as they stood at the last look-over, gazing down at Spider Rock.

  “Why are you glad?” Pat asked.

  Eddie gave the question a moment’s thought.

  “Because it’s good that the world began in a place where there’s lots of ground squirrels,” he said.

  Harmony didn’t want to leave the Canyon de Chelly. She felt it was so beautiful and so powerful that it might be able to turn things inside her and sort of line her up with life again. It was as if her spirit had lost its accustomed or assigned parking place; her spirit really wanted to be parked somewhere, and was looking for a place, but there were no places for a soul so dented and damaged. She just had to drift around and around the same old blocks, growing always more tired.

  But the beautiful canyon, with the sun shining into its depths, made her feel rested. It was a place where she could park her spirit and let it rest.

  “I wonder why they think the world began here,” Neddie wondered.

  “Maybe because they began here,” Harmony said. “I guess if something has always been a part of your life and your people’s lives you might think it was the place where the world began.”

  “Can we go see those ruins?” Eddie asked, pointing down toward the White House ruins. “There might be treasure in them.”

  “There might be a rattlesnake in them too,” Neddie said.

  “Rattlesnakes are really shy,” Eddie mentioned. “They don’t bite you unless you step on them.”

  “I’d just as soon not chance it,” Neddie said. “This looks like snaky country, to me.”

  “What if God is a rattlesnake?” Eddie asked. “Did you ever consider that?”

  “Where do you get ques
tions like that, Eddie?” Pat asked. “Why would God be a rattlesnake?”

  Eddie stared solemnly at his aunt.

  “Why wouldn’t God be a rattlesnake?” he asked.

  “Don’t provoke me, buster,” Pat said. “I asked you first.”

  “I asked you second,” Eddie said.

  “Pat, can’t you drop it?” Harmony said. “Eddie can have his own opinions about God, if he wants to.”

  “He doesn’t have his own opinions, though,” Pat said. “He has the Discovery Channel’s opinions, and who knows what kind of atheists run the Discovery Channel.”

  “Maybe Harmony’s right,” Neddie said. “Maybe she and Eddie should just go back to Las Vegas. They may not fit in too well in Tarwater.”

  “I want to come back here sometime,” Harmony said. “I think I’d feel better if I could come here and just look for a day or two.”

  “I want to put my stuffed animals in the trunk of the car,” Eddie said. “I don’t want them in the trailer—the altitude might make them sick.”

  “Eddie, the trunk of the car’s the same altitude as the trailer,” Neddie pointed out.

  “It would be cozier, though, in the trunk of the car,” Eddie said.

  “That’s too much trouble, get in,” Pat said.

  Instead of getting in, Eddie and Iggy ran off, back down the trail toward the look-over for Spider Rock. Both ran as fast as they could. Iggy ran slightly faster and tried to jump on Eddie, causing Eddie to trip. Eddie fell and Iggy jumped on top of him. Then Eddie got up and resumed his run down the hill, Iggy behind him.

  “Well, there goes Eddie and Iggy,” Neddie said. “It might have been easier to transfer the animals.”

  “That kid’s too brash,” Pat said. “I don’t know how much longer I can put up with such a brash kid.”

  “Pat, he’s just honest,” Harmony said. “I hope he doesn’t run down to a cliff and fall off.”

  “Relax, he’s over there making snowballs,” Neddie said.

  In the pine forests near the look-over for Spider Rock there were a few patches of snow, under the trees, in the shade. Eddie and Iggy were frolicking in one little patch of snow. Eddie threw a snowball and Iggy chased it down. When he tried to bring it back it dissolved in his mouth, which startled Iggy and made Eddie laugh.