by Larry Watson
He yanks her blouse out of her slacks, but when jamming his hand up her blouse creates too tight a fit, he tries a different approach. He brings his hand out and tries the buttons.
A neighbor coming to the back door might peer through the veil of rain and see Beverly and Calvin plastered to each other. Adam might walk in at any moment. She has to tell Calvin to stop, she has to, yet she lets her lips scrape across the stubble of his beard until she finds his mouth and there she fastens herself so that even if she could resolve the struggle between what she wants to say and what she should say speech would not be possible.
Let this be passion. Let this be her own long-suppressed lust. Let this be love. But please God, Beverly silently prays, whatever force is swiftly sweeping her past any capacity she might have to say no or wait, please let it not be mere vanity!
He has trouble with her buttons because the wet fabric keeps twisting and slipping in his fingers, so she opens up just enough space between them so she can unbutton herself. She has barely let the blouse land on the floor when he’s trying to pull up the cups of her brassiere. The wet fabric sticks to her, and his urgent efforts to get at her skin cause her bra to twist and bind, and once again she has to push his hands away. She shrugs out of the bra and can’t help but critique her own dark and shriveled nipples, but his hands cover her so quickly she doesn’t have to contemplate her appearance for long. He wants her out of her slacks as well, so she tugs down her zipper and wriggles out of her pants, pulling the underpants down with them.
Could the rain have penetrated her completely, found its way not only through her clothes but through all her body’s membranes? How else to explain her wetness in a woman of her age? When Calvin, having lifted her onto the cupboard, enters her, he slides in with an ease that’s almost frightening. When he pushes so hard he seems to have struck bone, she lets out a gasping cry unlike any sound she has made in her life. Who is this woman?
IF SOMEONE CAME TO the door or peered through Beverly’s window, he or she would witness a scene so typically domestic that there would be nothing remarkable—much less scandalous—in it. At the kitchen table a man and woman sit across from each other, and the steam rising from their cups probably means the coffee was just poured. He smokes, careful not to exhale in her direction. She wears a bathrobe and a towel turban. Although they seem pleased to be in each other’s company, neither can resist glancing out the window at the steady rain that parched Montana needs so badly. And with that thought a strange competition suggests itself to Beverly: Both needs have now been met, but which was greater—Montana’s for precipitation or a widow’s for touch?
“You said you wanted to speak to me,” she says to Calvin. “Or was that a euphemism? You’ve barely said a word.”
He crushes out his cigarette. “I talked to Bill last night. Marjorie’s not doing well.”
“Oh no! What’s wrong?”
“She had the surgery, but she never came out of the anesthetic. Sounds to me like she’s in a coma.”
“My God. How are the kids taking it?”
He shakes his head. “They don’t know. Bill didn’t say anything to them, and neither did I.”
“What’s the point of that? They have a right to know what’s going on with their mother.”
Calvin rises from the table but continues to stare out the window. “Do they? They’ll be happier without that knowledge. As far as they’re concerned, their mother is doing fine, and they’ll be seeing her soon. Why not let them believe that as long as they can?”
“I can’t agree—”
“When Pauline died I stayed up all night trying to think of the right words to break the news to Jeanette and Bill. And just about the time I realized there were no right words, it occurred to me that I didn’t have to tell them at all. I could just say their mother decided not to return from France. They might have hated her for that but she would have remained alive for them. In the end, I decided the truth is always the right course. So I gave it to them straight. And I watched them crumble under that news like I’d just put a thousand pounds on their shoulders.”
The mother in Beverly thinks but does not say, But you might have stayed around and helped them carry that weight. “It’s never easy,” she says instead.
He scowls in her direction at her little platitude.
And for all this talk of withholding information, Beverly thinks, you came here to share the news with me—what should I make of that?
She asks, “How’s Bill doing?”
“He’s pretty shook up.”
“Next to the death of a child, having your spouse die is about as bad as it gets. As we both know.” He doesn’t move from the window, but Beverly has already had sufficient experience with Calvin to know that her last remark was the sort to send him out of the room.
She stands and walks over next to him. “You don’t have anything to say to that?” He doesn’t turn to her, so she studies his profile. His jaw clenches, relaxes, and then clenches again. Pulling tighter the knot, Beverly thinks, that ties back the words.
“I didn’t think it called for a response,” he finally says.
“I just meant the memory of our own sorrow makes us feel especially bad for Bill and what he’s going through.”
“I know what you meant.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you believe you’ve got the market on grief cornered.”
“I’ve never said that.”
What is it about this man that seems to alter the climate around him? Not long ago it was heat, but now the air has acquired a chill. She wraps her robe tighter around herself. “Not in so many words you haven’t.”
“There’s no way to say a thing but in words.”
Was there a time in Beverly’s life when she had too much pride to do what she’s about to do? Probably. She grew up like other girls—like other women—wary of any hurt, accidental or intended, and Beverly slammed her share of doors, shed her portion of tears, and wore down the heels on more than a few shoes by spinning and walking away. But if the years have taught her anything, it’s that pride of that sort is a luxury no one can afford, not if they expect to find any happiness in the company of others. She wedges her way into the narrow space between Calvin and the window, and when he doesn’t back away but puts an arm around her, she doesn’t care if he does it grudgingly or not.
“You don’t think I’m saying something now?” she asks.
“Sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, in vento et rapida scriber oportet aqua.”
“Mr. Sidey, maybe you’re trying to impress me, but I don’t know if that’s an insult or sweet talk.”
“ ‘What a woman says to her man ought to be written in wind and running water.’ Something like that.”
“And I still don’t know.” She shakes her head and lets the furled towel fall to the floor. “Does it strike you as odd that while Bill and Marjorie are going through their miseries you and I are—well, what are you and I doing? Shall I be crude about it—going at it like a couple of rutting rabbits?” Although she doubts it will happen, Beverly hopes he’ll correct her and apply a more romantic term to their activities.
“You can call it what you like,” Calvin says. “I haven’t let it get in the way of what Bill asked me to come here to do.”
“Did Bill want you to come to town and threaten to shoot your neighbor’s dog and scare the wits out of a little boy?” And, she thinks but does not say, fuck the woman next door.
In response to her question, his arm drops from her shoulder, and he steps back from her embrace. As suddenly as the space opens between them comes Beverly’s insight: Calvin Sidey is always ready to run, and it doesn’t take much to set him in motion. As a young man, he ran from this block, from Gladstone, from Montana, from this country. From his family and the family business. He ran from sadness, and he ran from responsibility. If the gossip was true, he ran from the law. And if Beverly doesn’t set up an obstacle or a reason for him to stay now, Calvin Sidey will go, and a
nytime he goes it could be for good.
“Wait—I’m sorry!” As she grabs for his hand, her robe falls open. Her desperation, however, quickens her mind, and she makes it seem as though her sudden exposure is planned. She catches his hand in hers, brings it to her breast, and holds it there. And he doesn’t pull it away.
“I’ve spent too many years in the company of children,” she says. “I can’t seem to break the habit of thinking anyone can be teased out of any mood.”
“Teasing,” he says. “Is that what you call it? And what do you think I need to be jollied out of?”
The calluses on his palm are rough, and Beverly feels as though her breast is being caressed by a hand made of splintered wood.
“You know—that trying-to-see-past-the-rain mood.”
The door between the kitchen and the garage creaks. Adam—why didn’t she hear him drive in! Why didn’t she consider that the rain would bring him home early! Then Beverly does exactly what she does not want Calvin Sidey to do to her—she pushes away from him and tries to cover herself before her son enters the house.
Adam startles when he walks into the kitchen, suddenly confronted by his mother and Calvin Sidey staring at him as if he’s a teenager sneaking in past his curfew. But Adam recovers quickly. “Hello!” he says in a too-loud voice. “Am I interrupting something?”
“I was caught in the rain,” Beverly says. “Mr. Sidey was kind enough to help me with my groceries. How was your expedition? Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Not exactly. Kind of hard to get a feel for things just by looking at sagebrush and a few hills.”
“You got a bank robbery in this book of yours?” Calvin asks.
The question surprises Beverly. Calvin sounds as though he’s truly interested in Adam and his project.
“Because I was thinking,” Calvin continues, “you could track down old Horace Hagerman and talk to him. I believe he’s still alive. When Horace was a boy, he saw the James gang rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota.”
“Minnesota?” Adam says skeptically.
“Horace’s uncle even fired off a few shots at Jesse himself. Missed, of course.”
Before Calvin has finished speaking, Adam is shaking his head. “My novel takes place in Montana.”
“I believe what Mr. Sidey is saying,” Beverly says, “is that you could talk to someone who actually—”
“Never mind,” Calvin says.
Adam shrugs and says to Calvin. “Hey, I’m sorry about that little misunderstanding with your grandson yesterday. I tend to forget that I don’t have to turn every dealing with a kid into a lesson.”
“Did you pay the boy?” Calvin asks.
“He walked off before I got around to it.”
“You can pay me. I’ll see he gets his money.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
But Adam doesn’t reach for his billfold, and the silence and stillness in the kitchen takes on a charge, as if the air itself is first to sense the sudden antagonism between the two men.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Beverly says, grabbing up her purse from the countertop. “Two dollars? Was that the amount?” Without waiting for confirmation, she thrusts the bills in Calvin’s direction.
He stuffs them into the front pocket of his jeans. “Looks like the rain’s let up,” he says. “I’ll head on home.”
Beverly doesn’t follow him to the door. She’s frozen in place, trying to figure out if by paying Adam’s debt she has taken her place with the Lodges or the Sideys.
TWENTY-FOUR
Will measures off a length of string that will reach from the back of the garage down the alley and into the lilac bushes behind Mrs. Lodge’s house. He dips the length of string into the gasoline can in the garage. After pulling out the saturated string, he stretches it along the garage wall, careful to keep it close to the foundation and twining it in and out of the rakes, shovels, strips of lath, paint cans, and snow tires so it looks as though the string belongs there, just more crap lying about until the day comes when Will’s father or mother summons the energy to clean out the garage.
Will trails the string out into the alley, snaking through the gravel and dust until he comes to the lilac bushes, its flowers long since fallen and their perfume just a vanished memory. With the string still in hand, Will crawls under the shade of the heart-shaped leaves. He finds a stone the size and shape of a hamburger bun, and he weights the string down so it’ll stay put.
With the string’s other end still in the gasoline can, Will has a fuse long enough to allow him to light it from a distance and be out of danger before it goes off, no matter how fast it burns or how powerful the explosion might be.
He has no intention of helping Stuart and Gary spy on Ann, but he also knows there’s nothing he can do or say to stop them. So he’ll let them go ahead with their scheme. When he’s certain they’re on top of the garage, he’ll circle around the house so he can sneak undetected into the lilac bushes and light the fuse.
The gasoline, he’s pretty sure, will explode, maybe blowing out the garage walls and collapsing the roof. But if the gas only wants to burn, Will has prepared for that too. He’s taken a couple of old torn-up towels that his father uses for washing the car, poured a little gasoline on them, and left them, under crumpled balls of the Gladstone Gazette, next to the gasoline can.
Will’s primary objective is getting Stuart and Gary off the garage roof and keeping them off, but beyond that, he thinks it likely that he can escape blame for the fiery event. First of all, aren’t most garages, with their oily rags and containers of various flammable materials, fire traps? And if spontaneous combustion isn’t cited as the cause, certainly fingers will be pointed toward the Gitners, the Sideys’ neighbors to the north.
Mr. Gitner still burns his family’s trash in the alley in his “incinerator,” a fire-blackened oil drum, and he often leaves his fire unattended. When the sparks and feathery bits of burning papers rise with the smoke and heat, the wind could very likely send them right onto the Sidey property. Worse still, Mr. Gitner doesn’t seem to care what he tosses into the barrel, and both Will’s father and mother have heard the distinctive pops that come from doing something not only foolish but dangerous—tossing aerosol cans into the fire, for example. After the fire department tries to save the Sidey garage, won’t they notice the Gitner family incinerator and believe they’ve found the cause of the blaze?
But again, the important thing is that the garage will be gone, either its walls blown away by an explosion or the building burned to the ground, and once it’s gone, Stuart and Gary will be unable to climb onto its roof to spy on Ann Sidey. Will’s father will rebuild the garage, of course, but the new one will be closer to the house, exactly where his father wishes the garage were every winter when he has to walk through the cold and the snow to get to his car.
And does Will care about what might happen to his friends when the garage goes up in flames? Not really. As his grandfather said, they’re not really his friends, are they?
ANN SIDEY DOESN’T EVEN like the taste of beer, yet she’s already drinking her second cup. She hoped that if she got a little tipsy she’d be able to lift herself into a party mood.
But so far she can’t, and she knows the fault is in her. There’s nothing wrong or unusual about this party. Beer, whiskey, vodka . . . cigarettes . . . dark bedrooms and basement rec rooms for making out and more. And the Jensens’ home is in Western Meadows, the new subdivision where the houses are larger and spaced more widely apart, so that means the music can be louder. Because the night is warm and mild more kids gather out on the patio and in the backyard.
Ann stands alone at the edge of the sloping lawn, right where the grass runs out and a steep ravine begins. The night has taken its time coming on—it’s close to ten o’clock and the horizon has only now lost its last blush of light, allowing the darkness that began down in the ravine, among its boulders and its bent and broken trees,
to rise and finally overtake the land.
Since the day her parents left town, Ann has been reasonably successful at not worrying about her mother. Both her mother and father assured her that the operation was safe and routine, and Ann took them at their word. Besides, she had other matters to worry about.
But earlier tonight, when she was preparing for tonight’s party, Ann looked at herself in the mirror and wondered why her mother seldom wore makeup. She looked so pretty when she did. Two years ago, for example, when her parents went to the Christmas party at the country club, Ann’s mother not only put on rouge, eye shadow, and mascara, but she also wore lipstick that seemed to match perfectly the deep red of her dress. And oh, that dress! She had been with her mother when she bought it at Dalton’s in Billings, but Ann never saw it on her mother until that December night. A simple wool jersey, it clung to her mother like no other article of clothing she owned. It was low-cut too, and Ann could tell her mother was self-conscious about the décolletage because she kept tugging at the shoulders and neckline. But she did it in a good-humored, almost giggling way, and it occurred to Ann, perhaps for the first time, that her mother might be as excited about going to a party as Ann and her friends could be. But her mother hadn’t worn the dress since that night.
Didn’t her mother want to be beautiful, Ann wondered, as she put on her lipstick? Her mother was losing her looks already—the sad pouches under her eyes, the deepening lines framing her mouth. Didn’t she realize . . .
Ann had a vision of her mother dead, her face painted for eternity by a stranger, her beauty sealed in the grave. Ann’s hand began to tremble, and soon she could not follow the outline of her own lips, and in another moment, muddy rivers ran down her cheeks from her freshly applied mascara.
