by Larry Watson
Yes, she’s right—he is an Indian. But neither his race nor his size is his most distinctive feature. One side of his face is hideously scarred—both his eye and mouth twist downward and his skin shines as if it’s wet. His nose is flattened against his cheek.
“He’s going to kick her out of her house?” he shouts. “He’s the one who’ll be out of a house! I’ll burn this fucker to the ground!”
As he backs out, he tries to slam the screen door, but its spring prevents it from slamming. He settles for a kick that makes the door jump and rattle in its frame. Then he’s gone, and the rectangle that he darkened is once again flooded with the sunlight of high noon.
Beverly’s hands are trembling, and her legs feel as though they might give out.
While she’s watching the door, another voice startles her, and for the second time inside of a minute, her heart lurches with fear. When she turns, she sees Calvin Sidey.
“What’s going on here?” he says. “I heard someone shouting.”
“A man . . . he . . . I think he was looking for Bill.”
“Who was it? What did he want?”
“He said . . .” She isn’t sure why, but she doesn’t want to repeat what the man said about burning the house down. As frightening as that was, Calvin Sidey’s likely reaction to the threat is even more terrifying to imagine. “Apparently he was angry about getting that letter.” She points to the ball of paper on the floor.
Calvin bends over stiffly and scoops it up. He spreads it open, reads it, and then walks hurriedly to the door. “Did you see him leave?” he asks Beverly. “Was he on foot?” He opens the screen door and looks down the driveway.
“I think I heard a car. I’m not sure.”
“He came inside?”
She nods.
“With your permission?”
She shakes her head.
“Did he lay his hands on you?”
“No, no, he wasn’t after me.”
He looks carefully at her, as though he believes she might not have answered his last question truthfully. “You’re sure?”
She nods again. “I’m all right.” But now Beverly fears that she has gone too far the other way and is minimizing the threat the man posed. “He said he’d burn the house down,” she whispers.
Calvin’s eyes flare at her remark, and she quickly adds. “Just big talk, I’m sure.”
But Calvin is already on the move. He crosses the room, opens a cupboard drawer, and brings out a set of keys. “Let’s go.”
Not until they’re out of the house and heading for Calvin’s truck does she ask, “Where are we going?”
He still has the paper in his hand, and he waves it in the air. “This is an eviction notice. And we’re going to the address on the notice.”
He unlocks his truck and gets in, then reaches across and unlocks the passenger door. Beverly pulls it open and the hinges groan. She climbs into a cab that smells of tobacco and motor oil. She tries to settle into her seat but finds she has to move toward the middle to keep from being poked in the backside by a broken spring. “I’m not sure why you need me on this expedition.”
Calvin rams the truck into gear and backs up fast into the alley. When he brakes, gravel pings against the garbage cans. “You’re going to tell me how to get to that address,” he says, pointing to the letter on the dashboard. “And when we get there, you can tell me if I’ve got the right man before I have words with him. Now, which way?”
The address is on the south side of town, and Beverly directs him to drive straight down Third Street. She composes herself slightly. “When you say ‘have words’—is that what you had with the Neaveses? Words?”
“This will be a bit more forceful.”
“You threatened to kill their dog. What could be more forceful than that?”
He turns and looks directly at her. “Someone came barging into my son’s house. You know that can’t be allowed. It can’t.”
“Maybe we should notify the police.”
“Maybe.” He has to work the shift lever hard before he finds the right gear and the truck bucks into motion.
“Or the sheriff. Isn’t the sheriff supposed to handle eviction notices?”
“Who’s the sheriff now?”
“Neal Garner. He’s in his second term, I believe.”
“Is he any relation to Louie Garner?”
“It’s his son. Did you know Louie?”
Third is not a through street, but Calvin Sidey doesn’t slow down at any intersection. “Louie was sheriff years ago. Not that he was much good at the job.”
And if he were better at it, Beverly wonders, would he have arrested you for murder? “Louie served a couple terms as mayor too. A lot of people believe he was good for this town.”
“Do they.”
“I always thought he was a decent man.”
Beverly isn’t sure why she’s defending Louie Garner. She was never impressed with his intelligence or his leadership, but perhaps she wants to let Calvin know that since he left this town he has forfeited his right to criticize the people who stayed.
“Louie died of a heart attack winter before last,” Beverly says. “He was shoveling snow and he dropped dead in front of his own house.”
“You don’t say. Do I just keep going straight here?”
They’re in Gladstone’s business district now, six square blocks of stores and office buildings, and while they’re stopped at a red light, a friend of Beverly’s, Lois Parvin, exits Woolworth’s and crosses the street in front of them. Lois’s mouth opens as if she’s going to speak and her hand starts to rise, but then she looks away and hurries across the intersection. What happened? Did Lois take in that battered, rusted, coughing old truck, then catch a glimpse of Calvin Sidey behind the wheel, and conclude that the woman in the sundress sitting closer to the driver than the passenger door couldn’t possibly be Beverly Lodge? As for Beverly, she feels she should do something—lower her head, put her hand over her face—anything to keep from being recognized should Lois turn around and look again. But that feeling passes in an instant. Why should she cover her face in the town she has lived in almost all her life? She doesn’t care who sees her cruising around in Calvin’s truck! Beverly sits up straighter and even considers pulling her dress off her shoulders to give Lois, or anyone else—there’s Jack McCumber coming out of the Rim Rock Cafe and Janet Burwell is digging into her purse before she enters Powers Department Store and Otto Heinrich is climbing into his big Oldsmobile—an eyeful if they glance in her direction.
But then the light turns green, and as they continue their tour through the center of town, Beverly begins to question that brief surge of boldness. Was it nothing more than a determination not to feel ashamed, or is she actually proud that Calvin Sidey finally returned to Gladstone and chose her to ride beside him?
She immediately chides herself for even that brief flirtation with pride. Anyone who sees her might wonder who Beverly is riding with, but they’re unlikely to see anything scandalous in the sight. After all, there aren’t that many people in Gladstone who would recognize Calvin Sidey. He’s just another old man in a truck, a stranger in town.
SILENTLY CALVIN CURSES HIS son. Why did Bill leave town with this matter of the eviction left unresolved? He knows who his tenants are, and he must know who has this capacity for trouble. For that matter, what the hell is he doing renting a place to a single woman? And while he’s at it, Calvin lavishes a few of these unspoken curses on his daughter-in-law as well; if she weren’t intent on indulging herself with this so-called special operation—and in a city hundreds of miles away—Bill wouldn’t have felt he had to accompany her. Finally, however, Calvin spends his most damning oaths on himself. He didn’t have to say yes to his son’s request, but once Calvin did, he was the worst kind of goddamn fool if he let himself believe that the job wouldn’t ask any more of him than to sit in a rocking chair for a few days.
And now he’s brought this woman in on this. Calvin
didn’t need her to accompany him, not really. He has the letter and the address; he could have found his way there eventually. Is he trying to repay her somehow for getting into bed with him? In gratitude for fucking me, I’d like to invite you on this expedition to track down a deadbeat. What woman wouldn’t be flattered by that invitation?
But here she is, at his side. Is she the first woman inside this truck? Is that possible? If she thinks there’s any danger in this venture, she sure as hell isn’t showing any fear. She’s sitting up as if on alert, his keen-eyed sentinel. Business, just plain business, he supposes this might be called, and among the many entanglements he’s tried to keep his life free of, business is high on the list. Jesus, how he resented the time he had to spend on contracts, on negotiations, on procuring buyers and sellers and then, once the deal was done and hands were shaken all around, on extricating himself from them. Sell a man a house and he thought your friendship should be thrown in as part of the bargain.
Now, in front of the Farm and Ranch National Bank, are the men who conduct as much of a town’s business on its sidewalks and in its saloons as in its offices. By God, that could be the same group Calvin drove past on his way into Gladstone! Calvin complained to his grandson about the labor involved in the cowboy life, but he’d rather spend a day sinking fence posts than waste an hour yakking outside the bank.
He has to hand it to his son, however. Bill seems to understand that success in commerce has as much to do with those conversations on the street as in drawing up a contract. As much? Hell, more. Sidey Real Estate is in the right hands, that’s for sure, which is one more reason, God damn it, why Bill should be here handling an eviction that has his signature on it.
Calvin turns to Beverly. “Did he have a weapon?”
“Did he what? No. None that I could see, anyway. Unless you count his face. Which would likely scare more people than a shotgun.”
“So there’s no doubt: You’ll know him again if you see him.”
“That’s not the problem. The problem is forgetting him now that I’ve seen him.”
“I can take you back home,” says Calvin. “I’ll find the address on my own. And from what you say, I’ll recognize him.”
Without hesitation, Beverly points down the street. “You need to turn left at the next intersection. We’re almost there.”
At that announcement, Calvin Sidey’s heart hammers a little harder and a little quicker. He pictures his .45 back in the dresser drawer. If he hadn’t left the house so abruptly, if he’d given himself a few minutes to think through what he was about to do, would he have gone downstairs, retrieved the pistol, and brought it with him? But opening that drawer means bringing that bottle of whiskey into view, and he spends far more time thinking about that and the use he could put it to than he could a gun.
NINETEEN
Once they cross the narrow bridge spanning the Elk River, they are in a section of town that Beverly seldom has reason to visit. The houses here are small and often dilapidated. Lawns are sparse and yellow-brown or nonexistent, yet grass sprouts freely in cracks in the concrete or asphalt. Driveways aren’t paved and sidewalks gap and tilt. Beverly never uses the term herself, but she knows that this area is frequently called Dogtown. And though she was born and raised in Gladstone, she had never known how the section got its name. So she finally asked Burt. As usual, he waited a long time before answering, a maddening tactic that was calculated to make Beverly withdraw her comment or question. When she demanded to know, he answered her question with one of his own: “Who lives there?” She had to concede that the area had a large Indian population. Burt hesitated even longer, but finally said, “And what do Indians eat?” “Oh my God,” she said. “That’s absolutely ridiculous! That’s hateful!” Her response, however, did nothing to prevent him from continuing to use the term.
As they turn onto a narrow unpaved street that has neither curb nor gutter, Calvin says, “Right around here I drove my first motor car. It belonged to George Ellingsen, one of my father’s business partners. Of course there weren’t houses or streets around here then. Just an old wagon road and a couple of hardpan fields and he didn’t give me a damn bit of instruction. Put me behind the wheel and told me to go to it.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve? Thirteen maybe? Too young to be doing what I was doing. Of course there was nothing around here for me to run into or run over. Later I found out the expedition was my father’s idea. He had a notion that cars were going to be the way of things and he thought if I was going to take over the business someday it would be good for me to know what to do behind the wheel. He was too old to learn, he said, but I wasn’t going to get left behind.”
“Your father must have been a wise man.”
“Only where it came to turning a dollar.”
“A few years ago,” Beverly says, “some developers were interested in this area for a supermarket. They wanted to buy up all the land and houses around here and tear them down. Put in a parking lot and a big new Red Owl. Or SuperValu, I forget which. Your son opposed the plan.”
“Not a good idea to stand in the way of progress.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying that.”
“I can’t either.” He leans forward and looks for a house number. “Are we getting close?”
“Take a left up ahead.”
They turn onto a paved street. Beverly peers out, trying to see a house number. “Okay,” she says. “The third house on the right. That must be it.”
Calvin Sidey pulls to the curb in front of a tiny house with peeling white paint and torn screens. An old once-black Hudson with a flat tire slumps into the tall grass of the side yard, and a cardboard box outside the front door overflows with beer cans.
Calvin reaches past Beverly and opens the glove compartment. Inside are a box of safety matches, a crumpled bandanna, a Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco tin, and a stag-handled hunting knife in a leather sheath. Once she sees the knife, Beverly knows that’s what he’s searching for, but she still lets out a little groan when he brings it out.
“Take it easy,” he says, opening his door. “Whether I need this or not won’t be up to me.” He slips the knife and sheath into the back pocket of his jeans.
“Won’t you reconsider? I really think this is something for the sheriff to handle.”
“We’re here. No sense turning back now.”
“Should I come with you? To make the identification?”
“I’ll signal if I need you.”
He hasn’t quite finished arming himself. As Beverly watches him through the back window, he walks to the back of the truck, unfurls a canvas tarp, and lifts out a tire iron. He holds it close to his leg as he crosses the grass and steps onto the foot-high concrete slab that passes for a porch.
He pulls open the screen, holds it with his boot, and knocks on the door. Beverly takes it as a good sign that the inside door is closed. If people were in there, surely they’d keep that door open to try to get some air moving through the house.
She looks again at the eviction letter. It’s addressed to a woman, Brenda Cady, so Beverly has to wonder who came banging on the Sidey’s door. A husband? No, his name would have been on the lease. A boyfriend? A brother? A son?
Calvin has stepped off the porch and is peering inside the front window. Beverly cringes. If someone were inside with a rifle, this is when he’d open fire. But there’s no gunshot, and soon Calvin is out of sight, having walked around to the back of the house.
Early in her marriage, before Adam was born, Beverly sometimes accompanied Burt on business trips. There was nothing glamorous or exciting about these excursions; the two of them usually did nothing more than travel to a county seat to look up deeds or other documents in the courthouse. They seldom even stayed overnight, but Beverly enjoyed getting out of Gladstone, even for a day, and she liked riding with Burt, seeing new parts of the state, and helping him search through dusty county records.
Late one sum
mer night they were coming back from Bentrock, where they’d spent the day in the basement of the courthouse, when they came upon an accident. A car had flipped over into the ditch. Broken glass and twisted chrome glittered in the gravel along the shoulder of the road, and the beam of one headlight stared off crazily into the night sky.
Burt grabbed a flashlight to investigate and told Beverly to stay in the car. She understood that he didn’t want her to see what gruesome sight might be waiting in the wreck, and his concern touched her, even through her fear for the car’s occupants.
She did as her husband instructed, but it was difficult; curiosity and a desire to be of some use kept trying to propel her from the car.
She was startled by someone who suddenly appeared in the ditch, stepping high over the tall grass and coming her way.
It was a young man, and when he saw Beverly he said, smiling, “Can you give me a hand? I ran into some trouble here.”
She called for Burt, and he came running. They soon got the young man’s story. He had been in a baseball tournament in North Dakota, and he was on his way to his home in Livingston, Montana. He must have dozed off, he said, and missed the curve. When the car rolled, he was thrown clear, and he came to in the weeds. He wasn’t injured seriously, he insisted, nothing more than a few scratches on his hands and face and “a hell of a bellyache.” He reeked of beer, and though his speech was slurred, he made no effort to stop talking. “If my mama hears me complaining of a bellyache I’ll get a dose of castor oil. I hate that castor oil!” They took him back to Bentrock, delivering him to the sheriff who assured Burt and Beverly that the young man would receive medical attention—whether he wanted it or not.
Weeks later, over breakfast, Beverly said to Burt, “I wonder whatever happened to that young fellow who rolled his car.” It was nothing more than an idle comment.
