Fall Back Down When I Die

by Joe Wilkins

  A little less than a year ago now, October, with the evening’s freeze ghosting the dry grass, he got back from work and saw her Cavalier idling out front of the trailer, the windows fogged, dripping. It was dark enough that the hose confused him, though when he pulled open the driver-side door and a wave of exhaust rolled out, he knew what it was all about.

  She was in her robe, had brought a pillow and reclined the seat. He reached over her and shut off the engine.

  They made their second set of traps along the bank of a blind creek, the third near a game trail in the pines, and the fourth above a steep-sided box canyon. Though Wendell hadn’t thought of it, he was soon nervous, as high up as they were, as interested in the cliff edge as Rowdy was, but the boy was careful for the most part, and once they’d set the trap Wendell let him lie on his belly and hang his head over the edge, like a plumb bob. Wendell lay beside him and did the same, and with just their round heads out there in so much air, they grinned at each other. Wendell called a few hellos, which knocked around in the canyon, and as if it weren’t anything at all Rowdy called out a hello as well, his high, thin voice echoing faintly.

  Wendell’s heart beat against the ground. He thought to say something, to make a big deal of that hello, but then thought better of it. He pulled himself back from the edge, onto his knees, and Rowdy did the same. He smiled and took the boy’s hand, and they stood there like that, hand in hand. Wendell gestured toward the head of the canyon, where the wind sheared and flattened the grass.

  —Used to be a spring down there. Lemonade Springs, they called it. My old man said the water was sweet and sour at the same time.

  It was dry now, he told the boy. A good snowpack in the winter might make for a little creek in April and May, but not much more than that. Rowdy studied the canyon, the dry watercourse, and leaned into Wendell’s arm, laid his head against him. Wendell could feel his own pulse sounding the boy’s skull. Against his hip the boy’s more rapid, wingbeat pulse was the lightest feather.

  Then, above their own hearts, above the wind, came the gravelly sound of an engine. Or engines. Wendell turned. In the valley behind them, beyond the canyon’s mouth, two four-wheelers roared on fast and growling and skidded to a stop at the fence line. With the engines still running, one of the drivers fumbled for something holstered at his waist. As he lifted the black device toward his eyes, Wendell understood. Binoculars.

  He grabbed Rowdy’s wrist and pulled him to the ground, down behind a small outcropping of rock.

  —Stay down. Stay close.

  Wendell counted to thirty and inched back up. The other driver had gotten off and walked over to the first by then, and the two of them parleyed. The one yet on his machine was a man, given his mustache, and the other a boy, Wendell thought—a big boy, but a boy—judging by his roundedness, his clean cheeks. The man grabbed something—a pair of fencing pliers—from the tool case wired to the back of the ATV, just in front of a gun rack that held at least three rifles.

  It’s that Betts, Wendell thought. And Tricia Wilson’s boy. What was his name? One of those newfangled names he could never seem to keep in mind. Tricia, though, he remembered. She was older than he was, had been a varsity cheerleader when he was just in fifth grade, and whenever Delphia played Colter, he’d spent more time watching her than the game. He’d met Betts, too, maybe six months ago now, at the barn raising they’d had for Cotton and Donna Pinkerton, after Cotton, who’d only just turned forty, had been diagnosed with cancer.

  Three property lines came together down below, and none of them was Betts’s. To the south, where Betts and the Wilson boy had come riding up, was Glen Hougen’s land. To the west was all BLM, much of it leased by Glen. And Wendell and Rowdy were on the far edge of their land, what was left of the Newman spread, which was also leased by Glen.

  The Wilson boy strode right up to the four-strand barbed-wire fence between Hougen and BLM land and cut his way through, the wires whanging, looping up, and snaking as he went. Then he walked on down the fence and cut the next section too, and the wires fell stiffly, with the tension already released. Wendell watched as he cut close to a quarter mile of fence, all told. You couldn’t mend that; you’d have to refence. It’d be a whole day’s job. This wasn’t about driving stock through. This was about something else altogether.

  Once the boy was done, he handed the pliers back to Betts and got on his four-wheeler and rode on into the BLM land, where he disappeared around a ridge. Betts pulled out his binoculars and glassed the countryside again. Wendell dropped back down behind the rock, held Rowdy by the wrists. He breathed and waited. The clouds, massing in the north, swept over them, high and wide and white, and Rowdy shivered.

  Wendell inched back up and peered over. Nothing but a mess of cut fence and tire tracks in the grass, narrowing off to the west. He let go of Rowdy and straightened up.

  —Sorry about that, bud. I got a little spooked. I didn’t expect company, but, hey, we’re all right.

  The boy sat where he was, rubbing his wrists. He was so thin that the wind must cut right through him, Wendell realized. They’d left in the relative warmth of the noon sun. The boy wasn’t even wearing a coat.

  —You a little chilly? We got one more trap yet. You want to set it or hike on back?

  The boy stuck his hands in his armpits and shivered again. Rocked where he was in the pine duff and dust.

  Wendell said that was probably enough for today. They’d head on back. The boy had school tomorrow anyway—first day at his new school. Wendell helped him up and they were on their way.

  Wendell leaned over and plugged in the space heater—the wall unit in the boy’s room was out—and the thin coils reddened. He tucked the covers in tight around the boy and sat on the edge of the bed. They’d have to drive about ten miles to catch the north bus out of Colter, he told Rowdy, but even with that trouble he thought he’d have a better time at this new school. He hoped he would. The new school could be really good, it could, but he had to try to get along. If someone teased him, he had to go get the teacher. He couldn’t pretend to shoot anybody again.

  Rowdy lifted his hands to his cheeks. There was a bruise already beginning to show on the underside of his left wrist. Wendell touched the soft skin there.

  —Sorry about that, bud. Those fellas made me nervous.

  He knew too many men like Betts. Twitchy, sneering, always eager to prove something. He had worried what a guy like Betts might do, his rifles in easy reach, if he suddenly saw someone poke his head up over the rocks.

  Rowdy blinked, and Wendell thought for a moment the boy might say something. But he didn’t. Just yawned, swallowed. The boy’s face was at last beginning to fill out. Plenty of butter crackers and chicken noodle, Wendell thought. Well, good.

  —Here. I got something for you.

  Wendell dug the silver wolf medallion from his pocket and held it out to Rowdy. Told him to keep it in his own pocket. If he was ever scared or worried all he had to do was reach down there and get ahold of it to know that he was okay, that his uncle Wendell would look out for him.

  Rowdy sat up and took the medallion, studied it, brought it right up to his eye. Then smiled and closed the medallion in his hand and lay back down. He settled his head on the pillow, tucked his fist underneath.

  The space heater clicked off, and Wendell picked a book up off the floor. He had finished reading him Bless the Beasts and Children and was just getting started with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. He didn’t know what he’d read next. Most of the books he’d taken from school didn’t seem appropriate for seven-year-olds. Wendell wasn’t sure what Rowdy was getting from the books, beyond his voice and presence. But the boy had begun to insist on these readings before bed. Maybe the story itself didn’t matter. Maybe it was just the fact of a story—any story—that made the difference.

  The space heater clicked on again, and Wendell found his place and started reading:

  There was a special Nolan idea about the coffee. It was their one g
reat luxury. Mama made a big potful each morning and reheated it for dinner and supper and it got stronger as the day wore on. It was an awful lot of water and very little coffee but Mama put a lump of chicory in it which made it taste strong and bitter. Each one was allowed three cups a day with milk. Other times you could help yourself to a cup of black coffee anytime you felt like it. Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee.

  Wendell was surprised by how much he remembered all these years later, how the stories seemed so close to him, how they seemed to be his own life, his own language. Rowdy shifted and sank that much deeper into the bed, his eyes falling closed. Wendell pulled the quilt up around the boy’s neck once more and his fingers grazed the small whorl of his ear. He had been trapped in that apartment alone, Wendell thought. Christ Jesus. He swallowed. There was a lot the boy had suffered that he would never know, but he took some comfort in the thought that at least the boy could get himself some butter crackers now. Like Francie Nolan, he could at least have something. Francie had always seemed to Wendell simultaneously close and impossibly distant. She was a poor girl, someone he knew through and through, yet she was all the way to New York City. She was like Lacy. Or his own father. He could close his eyes and conjure the exact slopes of their shoulders, the feel of their hands in his, yet in his life in the world, his life of work and bills and a beer or two in the evening, he didn’t know either one of them anymore.

  Little puffs of breath slipped from between Rowdy’s open lips. Wendell read on a few minutes more before dog-earing the page and setting the book on the floor. He unplugged the heater and quietly stepped out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him, the windowless hallway inky dark. He made the front room and was feeling for the light switch when the phone rang. That loud, jangling ring. He rushed toward where it hung on the wall by the front door, nailing his shin on an end table and nearly running his head into the cupboards. Just as he grabbed at it, the phone rang again. When he answered, his voice was sharp.

  In reply, a fumbling voice, a girl’s, asked for Wendell.

  —You’re talking to him.

  A pause.

  —This is Maddy. We met the other day at the Antlers. Jackie gave me your number.

  Wendell started to hang the phone up but caught himself. The last time a girl had called him on the phone was just after his mother had died. Lacy hadn’t said much, had mostly just cried. What had he said to her? Had he told her to come home? That whatever had happened didn’t matter? He couldn’t remember. He wished he could remember.

  —I wanted to say I’m sorry, Maddy continued, about what I said. You’re right. I don’t know anything about you or your little cousin.

  Beyond the surprise of the call itself, and of the apology, there was something about being in the dark, in the utter dark, and her voice traveling the many prairie and mountain miles across the lines right into his ear. Wendell got the same feeling he’d had hiking through the mountains with Rowdy—a relief falling down through him like rain, a sudden gratitude at being so unguarded, so exposed.

  —It’s no problem, he said. I was drunk. I shouldn’t have got loud like that.

  —Is Rowdy in bed?

  —I just put him down.

  —I hope the phone didn’t wake him.

  —I don’t hear him.

  There was a moment of silence. Wendell leaned into the door frame.

  Maddy went on. She was wondering if there was any way she could help, she said. Not that he needed her help. That’s not what she meant. She was sure he was doing fine. It was just that her school was having a toy, book, and coat drive for Catholic Charities, and she could get a box of things—nice things—for Rowdy, if he needed them.

  The receiver hung in Wendell’s hand. He knew just what his old man would say to something like this, and he could feel the words of refusal already assembling themselves in his throat—but then he saw Rowdy shivering in the wind, thought of his own small shelf of pilfered books.

  —I could maybe even bring the stuff down some weekend, Maddy offered, her voice nearly trailing away.

  Wendell imagined her, tall and striking, among the pines.

  —Rowdy could use a winter coat, he said, swallowing. And some kid books. He likes me reading to him.

  —Oh, great! Maddy said, her voice bright with relief. She could do that, no problem. She asked him what size coat Rowdy wore. Wendell faltered. He hadn’t thought to check.

  —Shoot, he said, I’m not sure. When they brought him out, they just had his clothes in a couple of plastic grocery bags. I’ll have to look.

  Wendell flushed as he admitted this, his body readying for judgment, but Maddy’s voice was warm, understanding. She told him to go ahead and check and get back to her, and he scribbled her number on a piece of junk mail on the kitchen table.

  Out the thin window in the front door a few stars sharpened in the dark, the silhouettes of rocks and pines. He wanted to tell her about Rowdy talking today, the first word he’d heard him say, but held back. Later, he thought. He’d save it for later. They said an awkward good-bye and she hung up. The line clicked and buzzed in Wendell’s ear. He stood there staring out the dirty window, studying the same extravagant stars, the same stark ridges and trees he’d known all his life.

  Verl

  Fourteen

  Eating hamburgers and hotcakes your mother fries you would not believe it boy but this very day your old dad licked the inside of a pear cactus for dinner. (I am holding back some jerky and candy bars in case.) Anyways it was pulpy and green and sweet. I would not say it was bad but a sure sonofabitch to get at. I don’t know how much energy and vitamins and things I took from it. Your mother would know. She watches those daytime doctor shows.

  I will tell you this. To eat cactus meat and chew only a handful of dry jerky is a sight better than welfare or that disability. I will damn myself to hell before I take any of that again. I know your mother feels another way. Feels she was owed what came to her as she worked hard and that janitor work bunged up her back. Still. We must live how we say we live. She signed on. She was paid for the work she did. Yes I know she will say they signed on too. But who is they? I mean your mother is on one side that’s clear as a summer sky but it’s not even the same boss that hired her on the other side and is the new boss to blame or the oven company that works the both of them? These are things I don’t know.

  Anyways I walked all morning and holed up here most of the afternoon and napped and drew pictures of this country about me. Before me is a space of grass and sage. Off in the distance is Bald Knob. You know how it is with that lean fist of rock up top. It sweeps out. As if blown. As if there is a wind rushing across it even when there is not. I tried to get at that in the pictures. That feeling of wind. I think the likeness is not bad. I would like to show you someday.

  Later

  How are you boy? How is school? Are you into your basketball season now? Tell me about your days boy. God but I would like that. To hear about your days. To step out of my own. I walk and walk and my breath is easy that is true but my old heart still charges off with whatever I am thinking. I thought for a time I might somehow send you these notes. I thought on it hard but know now I would have to send them in the wind. Or if they would ride the light.

  Goddamn but there are things I want to tell you boy like remember the colder it gets to chop the ice for the yearlings in the morning like I wear this wolf’s tooth at my throat but goddamn I can tell you nothing now you will have to wait for

  Later

  I am thinking of why it is I am out here. It is time I tell you. Listen to me boy. I had been saying one thing with my mouth and another with my two hands. I had been cashing your mother’s disability checks and buying feed and gas and whatall. I had been collecting CRP on that old pasture near the creek. I had been taking grass that was not mine. I had been lyin
g to myself. It is easy to do. Here is a hint boy. When things are easy they are most often wrong. Most often dishonest and cowardly. That is why I am out here. Because I would not lie anymore. Would not be a coward anymore. Would not abide the cowards and fuckers those fuckers.

  I imagine you are hearing all kinds of lies and should hear the truth of it from your old dad who made you. It’s true I killed a wolf. I do not deny that. Don’t do me boy like Peter did Jesus. When a friend asks you tell him. I am not ashamed. They let those wolves loose down there in Yellowstone and did not think of us. Did not think of us here trying our best raising cattle and sheep and families on the land. There was a wolf on our land. My land. A wolf will thin a lamb crop down to nothing. A wolf would thin us down to nothing. What does it matter we didn’t have any wolf kills yet? It was only a matter of time. I tell you when I had the time I took it. I spotted that wolf down by the hayfield where the elk and mulie deer come to munch alfalfa nubs in the morning and shot it through the heart. I saw later by the blue of its teats it was a she-wolf.

  To kneel down by her there. That was something.

  We speak of wolves. You hear about them in the news and everyone jawing at the café and who has ever seen one? Not me. Until then leastways. I was shaking. I remember I was shaking. Was it because I had done a thing they could jail me for? No I have done more than a few of those in my years. I am telling you boy a wolf is a thing to look at. I think now if I only had fur thick as a wolf I’d live out here and not be cold when the sun goes down.

  But the wolf was on my land. That is the beginning and the end. That she-wolf may as well as have come up and ate a hole in my heart.

  That right there is enough. But that is not all. The wolf is more than the wolf. One thing the wolf is is laws. What I have much hate toward are laws that make a man a slave on his own land. If I wanted to let that wolf champ and slaver then fine. If not then fine. But that is not what the law says. The law says the wolf can only be shot after confirmed livestock kills and the right paperwork and whatall. The law says I have no choice. Marks me ignorant. Makes me a coward. The law is a goddamn crime. This land is mine. God give it to me through my old dad and his old dad through him.