The Late Child

by Larry McMurtry

  “I wish I was as carefree as that kid and that puppy,” Pat said.

  Harmony opened the trailer and got Eddie’s box of stuffed animals out. The box itself wouldn’t fit in the trunk of Gary’s car, but the stuffed animals fit. While she was fitting them in, Eddie and Iggy walked up. Eddie’s cheeks were red from the cold.

  “Mom, my hands are cold,” he said. “Thanks for moving my stuffed animals.”

  Harmony picked Eddie up in her arms. Iggy jumped around her legs.

  “You’re a permissive parent, Harmony,” Pat said, with an edge in her voice, as they were driving back down the road to Chinle. It was on the tip of Harmony’s tongue to ask her sisters if they would just let her out and go on to Oklahoma without her. She felt that if she could just sit and look at the Canyon de Chelly for a few days, her spirit might recover. All her life, despite what bad things might have happened, she had started her days with an optimistic feeling. Even if a boyfriend left, it would usually only take a few days for her to recover her optimistic feeling. After all, there might be a better boyfriend out there somewhere.

  Pepper’s death was different, though. It was final. There wasn’t going to be a better daughter out there for her, ever. There wasn’t going to be any daughter. Somehow life had carried her on, past the time of her daughter—a terrible fact, but a fact. She had always been the person who cheered other people up. She had even been able to cheer her own sisters up, when something bad happened in their lives. She had always been the optimistic one.

  Now, it seemed to her, her sisters were growing impatient with her. They knew she had had a tragedy, but they were getting impatient anyway. They wanted her to be the cheerer-upper—neither Pat nor Neddie was cut out for that role. They probably knew they were expecting too much of her, that their need was unfair. Her sisters were realistic women; they knew they couldn’t expect her to get over Pepper’s death and resume her old role in only three days—yet that was what they did expect. They expected her to start being her old, optimistic self. That was why she felt like asking them if they could just leave her at the Canyon de Chelly for a few days. She could always take a bus to Oklahoma, once she felt a little better. That way she wouldn’t have the strain of feeling that people were expecting things of her that she couldn’t possibly deliver.

  Harmony was trying to think of how to phrase her request—how to put it in a way that wouldn’t upset Eddie, or either of her sisters—when an unexpected thing happened. She happened to look out the window, as they were going around a curve—she was hoping for a last glimpse of the Canyon de Chelly—and happened to see a U-Haul trailer going by. The trailer was passing them on the right, between them and the canyon. Neddie was driving. Pat was smoking and filing her nails. Neither of them saw the trailer going by. Harmony closed her eyes and opened them quickly, to assure herself that she was awake and that a U-Haul trailer was indeed passing them. She was awake, but the trailer wasn’t exactly passing them, anymore. It was bouncing off at an angle, toward the beautiful canyon. It was going at a rapid rate, too.

  At first Harmony wasn’t totally sure that it was their U-Haul that had passed them. She knew that U-Haul trailers were normally attached to cars, unless they came unattached. They didn’t have motors. They couldn’t drive themselves. So the trailer bouncing off toward the canyon had to have come loose from some car. It could well be the trailer that had all her earthly possessions in it. She suspected that it was their trailer, but she was reluctant to look back and confirm her suspicions. If it was their trailer it might be better just to pretend she hadn’t noticed its journey toward the canyon. After all, it might be a serious crime to allow a U-Haul trailer to bounce into the Canyon de Chelly. The canyon was a national park—Harmony knew that much. She didn’t know what the legal penalties might be for allowing a U-Haul to bounce into a national park. Also, there was the question of what the U-Haul people would think about it.

  “Mom, are you sad?” Eddie asked, patting her on the leg.

  “Why do you ask, Eddie?” Harmony said.

  “Because you don’t look right,” Eddie said. “Are you getting sick to your stomach?”

  “Eddie, I’m just happy we moved your stuffed animals—that’s the thing I’m happiest about, right now,” Harmony said. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the U-Haul cross a stretch of bare rock and disappear into the Canyon de Chelly.

  “I hope it didn’t hit any of the sheep,” she said, trying not to allow herself to think about the other things the trailer might hit—the people who were herding the sheep, for example.

  “Hit what sheep?” Neddie asked.

  “The sheep at the bottom of the canyon, Neddie,” Harmony said. She looked out the rear window of the car and confirmed her worst suspicion. Their trailer was gone. All she could see, out the back window, was the clear blue sky of Arizona.

  “What are you and Eddie cooking up now?” Neddie asked, assuming that some kind of game was being played.

  “Oh,” Harmony said. Then she remembered her resolve, which was to pretend that she didn’t know the U-Haul had just bounced into the Canyon de Chelly, a famous national park. She didn’t say another word.

  “What? I can’t hear you,” Neddie said.

  “This is a ridiculous trip,” Pat said. “I don’t know why either of us thought it would be a good idea to uproot Harmony and Eddie. As soon as we get home Harmony will steal my fiancé—I feel it in my bones.”

  “Pat, shut up, the trailer’s gone!” Harmony said, forgetting her resolve in her irritation with her sister, who seemed to have the notion that she was a sex addict too, when in fact it had been years and years since she had had a lover exciting enough that she would even have had a chance to develop sex addiction.

  “What trailer?” Pat asked.

  Then, at the same moment, she and Neddie got the message. Pat looked around and Neddie looked around and saw no trailer behind them.

  “Oh my God, it’s gone,” Neddie said. “Where did it go?”

  “It went into the canyon,” Harmony said. “I just hope it didn’t hit anything at the bottom.”

  Eddie stood up in the back seat and saw that the trailer wasn’t there anymore.

  “It went,” he said. “I’m glad I got my animals out.”

  “Oh shit—excuse me, Eddie!” Neddie said. “You mean it went into the canyon?”

  “Yep,” Harmony said. “All my worldly possessions are gone forever.”

  “But not my stuffed animals—they’re safe in the trunk,” Eddie reminded them all.

  9.

  Neddie backed up to where Harmony thought the car was when the trailer went over the edge into the canyon. But Harmony, because she could only bear to watch out of the corner of her eye, underestimated the distance they had gone since losing the trailer. When they got out and cautiously peeked over the edge into the canyon, they saw nothing except the rocky canyon walls. Across the way, a great sheer wall of rock swooped upward, above the White House ruin.

  “I guess it fell off the cliff a little farther back,” Harmony said. “I was trying not to look when I saw it was going over.”

  “That was dumb,” Pat said, with the edge still in her voice. “I guess you think all we have to do is look for the trailer with all your stuff in it.”

  “It wasn’t dumb, it was cowardly,” Harmony said. “I didn’t want to watch.”

  “The least you could have done was mark the spot,” Pat said. She sounded annoyed.

  “Stop picking on Harmony—she’s hurt,” Neddie said. “I’ll pick on her, if somebody needs to pick on her.”

  Pat suddenly burst into tears.

  “Nobody likes me,” she said. “Nobody ever has liked me. I wish I’d gone on and married Rog. At least I’d get laid no less than twice a week.”

  “Pat, it may not be too late, if he survived the gas explosion,” Harmony said. The thought that her tragedy had lured Pat away from a man who had probably incinerated himself in a gas explosion made her feel bad. Sh
e had no intention of stealing any of Pat’s fiancés, but she had no way of replacing one, either.

  “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings,” she said.

  “I’m sorry too, and Iggy’s very sorry,” Eddie said.

  “I don’t know what you think Iggy’s got to be sorry about,” Pat said. “He’s a dog. He didn’t hurt my feelings.”

  “Well, he peed on your book, though,” Eddie said.

  Pat had been whiling away the time between scenic stops by reading a Harlequin romance—she was never without six or seven Harlequins.

  “He isn’t trained good yet,” Eddie said, ruefully. “He’s been an orphan too long.”

  “You mean the little mutt peed on my Harlequin?” Pat asked. “That’s the story of my whole life. I can’t even read a stupid romance book without a dog peeing on it.”

  She picked up the paperback and threw it out the window.

  “Pat, don’t litter, this is a national park,” Harmony said, before Eddie had a chance to make the same criticism.

  “Well, then it’ll make a nice present for some park ranger, provided he don’t mind a little puppy piss,” Pat said. “Maybe in this cool air it will dry out and be as good as new.”

  “Let’s concentrate on one thing at a time,” Neddie advised.

  “I was concentrating on one thing at a time,” Pat said. “I was concentrating on a sexual fantasy and that Harlequin was my guidebook.”

  “We need to find that trailer,” Neddie said.

  “Why?” Pat asked. “It’s gone. If it’s gone, it’s gone.”

  “But all my bras are in it,” Harmony said. “I can’t ride all the way to Oklahoma with just one bra.”

  “No, but there are stores between here and Oklahoma where you can buy more bras,” Pat said.

  “None of my possessions were very good possessions,” Harmony said. “Maybe it’s just as well that they’re gone.”

  “Well, my bed was a good possession,” Eddie reminded her. “It was a very good possession. And my blankets and my pillow were very good possessions, too. I’m going to need my red pillow to sleep on when we get to Oklahoma. I don’t like to sleep on pillows that aren’t red.”

  They had to follow the canyon edge for what seemed like a long distance before they spotted the trailer. It was on some rocks, thirty or forty feet down, and it was broken wide open. Harmony’s possessions were scattered everywhere. To her embarrassment she could even see some of her bras. The suitcase she had them in had burst open. Now her underwear was littering a beautiful national park.

  “Oh well, cheer up, honey,” Pat said. “Win a few, lose a few.”

  At that point Iggy began barking wildly. Harmony looked around and saw Eddie, sliding on his bottom down a steep trail toward the trailer. Below the little ledge where the trailer rested, the canyon walls fell away for hundreds of feet.

  Harmony was too scared even to speak. She was about to lose her other child. It would be a miracle if Eddie could keep himself from going over the edge. Iggy was wildly upset, but Eddie was as nonchalant as if he were going down a slide at the playground.

  “Oh my God!” Pat said, when she noticed Eddie.

  “Keep quiet,” Neddie said. “Stay calm. Eddie knows what he’s doing.”

  “His dog doesn’t think so,” Pat said.

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Neddie repeated, and she was right. Eddie stopped sliding right where most of the possessions from the trailer were scattered. He peeked into the trailer, spotted his red pillow, crawled in and took it, and started back up the canyon wall, clutching the pillow.

  “I told you he knew what he was doing,” Neddie said.

  “Yeah, but if he had missed he’d be gone now,” Harmony said.

  Even so, it was on the tip of her tongue to yell down to Eddie and ask him to bring her a couple of bras. Since he didn’t seem to be in any danger, he might as well be useful.

  Eddie soon found that it was harder to go up a canyon wall than down a canyon wall, particularly while clutching a red pillow. Fortunately there were little bushes that he could grab, but every time he grabbed one, his pillow slipped loose and slid back down amid the debris. After he lost his pillow for the third time, he became visibly annoyed. Disgusted, he turned his small face up to them.

  “Mom, I can’t climb up!” he yelled. “Come and get me.”

  Harmony looked down into the great space that opened below the trailer.

  “I can’t, Eddie,” she said. “I can’t climb. Just rest a minute and come on up. You don’t have to hurry.”

  “No, I’m too small, I can’t,” Eddie said.

  “Do we have a rope?” Pat asked.

  “No, why would we?” Neddie said. “We ain’t ropers.”

  “If you’d let me seduce that old cowboy back in Nevada he might have come with us and then we’d have a rope,” Pat remarked. “Then we wouldn’t be in this pickle.”

  “No, if he’d had to put up with you for two or three days I expect he’d have hung you with that rope and we wouldn’t be no better off than we are now.”

  “Eddie, climb on up, we need to leave,” Harmony said.

  “No, I’m too small,” Eddie yelled.

  “Just leave your pillow, honey,” Pat said. “We can get you another pillow.”

  “No, it might not be red,” Eddie yelled. He bit the pillow with his teeth and climbed a few feet, the pillow dangling from his mouth. But he was still a long way from the top.

  Just then they heard a car coming along the road by the canyon. It was a pickup with a saddled horse in it.

  “It’s a cowboy, he’ll have a rope, run stop him, Pat!” Neddie yelled.

  Pat ran to the road and waved until the pickup stopped.

  “She’s hoping it’s a guy who might be interested,” Neddie said. “Look at her. This high altitude’s got her worked up.”

  Harmony couldn’t tell that her sister Pat was particularly worked up.

  “I think she just wants to save Eddie,” Harmony said.

  “You don’t know her like I do,” Neddie said. “She’s mad because we didn’t take the time to let her screw that old cowboy. This one will be lucky to escape, I don’t care how old he is or what he looks like.”

  The driver proved to be a young Navaho cowboy of somber mien. He was wearing a blue down vest and a very large hat with silver on the band. He came walking along with Pat, a lariat in one hand. It was so chilly that Harmony could see his horse’s breath condensing as it waited in the pickup.

  The young cowboy nodded at Harmony and Neddie, but didn’t speak. He looked over the edge and spotted Eddie, who had his pillow gripped in his teeth. He was trying to climb, but the pillow was a severe encumbrance.

  “Thank you for helping us,” Harmony said. “I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t come along.”

  If the young Navaho had an opinion about what they would have done, he didn’t voice it. Eddie looked up, saw him, and stopped climbing. The cowboy dangled the rope in his direction. The rope wasn’t quite long enough, but it was close. Eddie only had to climb another yard to reach it. He managed to inch his way just high enough that he could grasp the rope.

  Harmony had supposed that Eddie would loop the rope around his shoulders, so the Navaho cowboy could pull him to safety—in helicopter rescues on TV the rescued person always had a safety belt of some kind looped around them.

  But that wasn’t the way it was happening in this rescue. Eddie gripped the rope in his two little hands, while holding the red pillow in his teeth. The Navaho cowboy was as methodical as he was silent. He was careful not to bump Eddie against rocks, or pull him through the stiff little bushes that grew on the side of the canyon.

  Still, all Harmony could think of was, What if he falls? He wouldn’t be sliding on his bottom, this time; he might land on the ledge or he might not.

  “Pat, what if he falls?” Harmony said—she was unable to keep her fear inside her any longer.

  Just before Eddi
e got to the top he almost did fall. His pillow slipped from between his teeth and he took one hand off the rope in order to catch it. He was only two feet from the top when this occurred, and the reason it occurred was that he looked up at his mother and smiled. When he smiled the pillow slipped loose, but he quickly caught it with his free hand. Eddie seemed to be enjoying being pulled up a canyon wall by a Navaho with silver in his hatband.

  “He doesn’t see it from the point of view of a mom,” Harmony said. Nobody was paying her any attention—her sisters didn’t see it from the point of view of a mom, either, although they were moms. Now that Eddie wasn’t dead they just wanted to get headed back to Oklahoma.

  When Eddie was finally safe on level ground, the first thing he did was hand the red pillow to Harmony. He was pretty dusty, from being pulled up the canyon wall, but he looked perfectly content. He didn’t bother to dust himself off.

  “Thank you very much,” he said, to the Navaho cowboy. “If you hadn’t got me up I might have lost my red pillow.”

  “No trouble,” the cowboy said. He seemed to find it reasonable that Eddie would risk his life sliding down into the Canyon de Chelly after a pillow.

  Harmony felt a little shy. It was clear that the Navaho cowboy didn’t particularly enjoy conversation. She wanted him to know how grateful she would always be that he had come along when he did and helped Eddie back to safety.

  “Thank you very much, sir,” Harmony said shyly. “I’m his mother. If you hadn’t helped get him up safely this all could have ended differently.”

  The Navaho cowboy was coiling his rope. He looked up, briefly, and nodded at Harmony. Then, rope in hand, he went back to his pickup, with nothing more said.

  “Do you think he was a chief?” Eddie asked, when the Navaho man was out of hearing. “He wasn’t very talky. I wanted to ask him about mountain lions but I didn’t because he wasn’t talky.”

  “That’s cowboys for you,” Pat said. “Cowboys are all business. Very few of them are talky and very few of them know the first thing about sex, either.