Fall Back Down When I Die

by Joe Wilkins

  She was crying now. She got in the Tercel and drove back to the highway and sat there for a time. Then turned toward home.

  Kent had knocked on her office door just after lunch with an iced tea—a wedge of lemon, just like she liked—an apology, and all the files on the elementary-school special-ed students. Gillian had gotten herself together by then and offered her own apology in return. Kent was right about one thing: She was a good teacher. She could do this.

  Gillian went over the files on her new students once more and then set out for the elementary wing. The elementary special-ed students spent most of the day in their grade-level classrooms and were pulled out in the afternoon for a couple of hours of what the district termed “enrichment.” For those who needed more one-on-one time or fewer distractions, this made sense. But there were others for whom no amount of enrichment would help, children with issues so involved it would take a truckload of resources to reach them, to perhaps tilt their coming years toward a path, if not better, at least less mean. For instance, the fifth-grader who couldn’t read, who had burn scars licking up his neck from a house fire, likely meth-related. And the third-grader who couldn’t keep a book or pencil or homework sheet, who lost everything she was given, who sometimes showed up to school without shoes, who kept sneaking away and hiding in small, dark places—beneath tables, in supply closets, behind the hedges on the recess yard—and wetting herself.

  When Gillian knocked on the door to the second-grade classroom, Miss Allen poked her head into the hall and ushered out three children. Gillian looked at her form and said she was expecting only two students.

  —That’s these two here, Miss Allen said.

  She motioned to a moon-faced girl with a bowl cut and an incredibly obese, brown-haired boy.

  —But you’re going to want to take this one too.

  Miss Allen put her hand to the third child’s small back and pushed him forward. It was the boy from this morning, still tapping at his cheeks. He was new just today, she explained. She’d heard that he’d been fostered out. Then Miss Allen leaned in toward Gillian.

  —Definitely autistic, she whispered, but probably some trauma too. Doesn’t say a word. Not. A. Word.

  Gillian studied Miss Allen’s thin face, the flyaway hairs at her temples, the yellow of her blouse. She knew what it was like, the immense work of a classroom, of keeping everything together and, hopefully, moving little by little forward.

  —I don’t have any paperwork yet, but, sure, he can join us in the afternoons.

  Miss Allen put her hand to her chest.

  —Oh, thank you. These past few days have been a bit rough.

  Gillian smiled at Miss Allen. Then leaned down to the boy.

  —And what’s your name, kiddo? Is it Ricky? Bartholomew? Oh, I know. Eustace. I just bet you’re a Eustace.

  The boy paused his fingers in mid-tap and gave her a lopsided grin.

  —I’m Rowdy, he said.

  His voice was cracked, sandy, clearly not much used. But high and sweet too. The boy swallowed, knotted his hands at his chest, and looked up at Gillian, who reached out and touched his shoulder. It was like the wings of moths all through her, and she had the sudden idea that this classroom itself might be the thing she needed.

  Verl

  17

  I have had hard times lately boy. Writing the story out for you I saw red and cut north to the river and shot a mulie deer come down for water just to show them I was not afraid. You have probably heard about it in the papers or on the radio news. Them almost catching me. Goddamn. I ran. Ran in the night and through the night. Slept only minutes here. Minutes there. I do not even know now where in the mountains I am.

  Wendell

  HE CRANKED THE HEAT IN THE LUV, BUT IN THE PREDAWN CHILL​ ROWDY shivered anyway until the Colter bus came groaning up the hill. It was an older style than the one from Delphia—faded yellow nose curved, windows low, clear, and wide—and Wendell felt bad about that. The bus driver, a woman with a tight helmet of tiny red-brown curls, squinted at the two of them and told Rowdy to look lively, that they had more stops to make. The door folded shut behind the boy, and the bus heaved and sighed, then disappeared south down the road. Wendell studied the dark gold hills and the dry grass, the blue shadows pooling in the cutbanks. Land he’d known all his life. And he wished Rowdy a good school day, a good teacher, maybe even a friend.

  The early light came bright and sideways, from east to west, and in that cold, distant brilliance Wendell shivered himself. He thought of the winter coat Maddy had promised. He had called her back with the boy’s size yesterday, after he’d put Rowdy to bed, and she’d asked if Rowdy had a favorite color. He felt bad that he hadn’t noticed that either—hadn’t considered it, to be honest—and didn’t want to admit a second such failing, so he just said red. He could hear her writing it down, the scratch of the pencil all the way through the phone lines, and it pained him to be lying like that, on top of taking a handout. Still, he didn’t know the next time he’d get into Billings for a coat. And he wasn’t sure if they carried picture books at the Walmart. He’d never had occasion to look. That was if he could even afford it, after groceries, after the next payment on the back taxes. Whether it was red or any other damn color, Rowdy needed a coat. That was the simple fact, no matter what his old man would have made of it.

  Wendell drove north again and at the timbered gateway turned off the county road and drove west into the Bulls, toward the Hougen ranch. He parked near the shop, by the gas tanks, leaving plenty of room for Glen’s flatbed and Carol’s Buick to get out. He tucked his T-shirt into his jeans, made sure his fly was zipped up, then pulled the can of Copenhagen from his back pocket and tossed it on the dash of his truck. Though he figured his reputation was more or less shot from the stunt he’d pulled last weekend, he knew Carol frowned on chewing tobacco. No need to keep digging when he was already in the hole. He crossed the gravel and came up the curving sidewalk through a front yard that was green even this late in the season and knocked on the door.

  Carol answered in a housedress and slippers. She eyed him a moment, then waved him in. Wendell pulled his cap off and stepped into the mudroom. Carol didn’t wait but went ahead, and he took off his flannel jacket and boots. He took his time in the hallway, studied the Western art—a lone Indian slumped on a paint horse above a deep canyon; a bull elk posing on a mountaintop; three cowhands crouched around a breakfast fire, the sky stained with sunrise. He liked the feel of the soft cream-colored carpet beneath his socked feet and the rich brown paneling of the walls and the way the ensconced fixtures filled the house with thick, buttery light. He could smell bacon. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. He’d handed Rowdy one of those breakfast bars in the truck but hadn’t grabbed one for himself.

  Glen was at the kitchen table, slurping coffee, jotting something on the little notepad he always kept in his shirt pocket. He looked up at Wendell, gave a chuckle. Since he’d given Wendell a couple of days off and then Wendell had been working on the fencing nearer his place, they hadn’t seen each other in more than a week.

  —You dry out yet? Glen asked him. Carol said you were just about pickled the other morning.

  Carol banged a spatula and brought out a plate of bacon and toast and without even looking at Wendell set it at the table.

  —Sit on down, son. We’ve done forgiven you.

  Glen glanced at Carol.

  —Mostly, anyway.

  As Carol turned back toward the kitchen, Glen continued.

  —I tell you, it weren’t so long ago I used to get to feeling itchy now and again myself. Once slept the night on the pool table there at the Antlers. Woke the next noon to old Dean Feeney pumping quarters into the poker machine.

  Carol dropped a cup of coffee in front of Wendell, the black liquid sloshing. Wendell thanked her and turned to apologize again about last weekend, but she was already gone. Back in her bedroom or somewhere. Glen chuckled.

  —She don’t much like it when
I tell war stories. She thinks the church cured me of all that, but mostly I just don’t get so itchy as I used to. That happens if you get old enough, trust me. Anyway, don’t just sit there looking hungry. Makes me uncomfortable. Eat up.

  Wendell laid two slices of bacon across a piece of toast and folded it into a sandwich and took a bite. Butter, salt, bacon fat—Wendell wasn’t sure the last time he’d had something this good. He’d have to pick up some bacon for him and Rowdy. That’d be a treat.

  Glen slurped his coffee, slurped again. He closed his notepad and dropped it into his shirt pocket. Trained his eyes on Wendell.

  —Listen, Wendell, I’m sure you had a reason, and you don’t even have to tell me, but on top of getting shit-faced and leaving that poor little bastard here all night, you cut out of work yesterday. That’s one thing I can’t have. Just can’t. I needed you on those corrals.

  Glen toyed with his coffee cup. Wendell’s guts churned.

  —You know there’s plenty of boys over in Delphia or down in Colter that’d like your job. Lanter ain’t the brightest bulb, but I could pay him half of what I pay you and bunk him out there in the shed, and he’d be happy as a buck goat.

  Glen allowed that Wendell was the best goddamn hand he’d had, and he knew Wendell had a kid to raise all of a sudden and that was tough. But he’d let Wendell off early the whole week to meet Rowdy at the bus stop, even though Carol would have been happy to pick him up. And he’d let Rowdy ride with Wendell in the truck that day.

  —I ain’t being no son of a bitch about this, Glen said. You just got to get it figured out. You maybe got a kid to raise, but I got a ranch to run. And goddamn but I’m going to run it right.

  Wendell glanced over at Glen and turned back to his plate. He could feel each little wing of bone in his neck shift and creak as he nodded.

  —All right, that’s enough out of me. Finish up your bacon.

  Glen pushed up from the table, slapped his hat on his head, and was out the door. Wendell washed his last bite down with a swig of coffee and ferried his plate to the kitchen sink. He felt plain pinned to the wall about last weekend, but though he’d hung his head and nodded along, trying on the guilt, Wendell couldn’t find his way to feeling bad about yesterday. In truth that had been a good goddamn day, setting a trapline out in the Bulls with Rowdy. Wendell smiled to himself, and he hoped Rowdy might think on it and give a smile today at school. He turned for the door and nearly ran over Carol, who had a pair of Rowdy’s little white socks in her hand, was holding them out to him. Wendell made himself look right at her as he took the socks.

  —I’m sorry, Carol. I’m awful sorry.

  They spent the morning shoring up the corrals—hammering loose boards, replacing the rusted hinges on the cutting gate, and against the dust laying down a load of straw all through the pens and chutes. On Monday, they’d start the roundup, start bringing in Glen’s herd of red Angus and polled Hereford. Most would be shaggy and half wild, and it’d take the better part of three days, hunting the cattle out of the draws and hills and trailing them all back here to the homeplace, back to the corrals. Babe MacDonald, the cattle buyer, would roll in with his stock trucks on Thursday, and they’d cut, weigh, and sell the calves on Friday, which would make it a full week of cattle work. They’d need help. They’d get Glen’s daughter, Rochelle, and son-in-law, Timmy, to come out. Wendell mentioned that Freddie Benson was almost always looking for work and so Glen said all right, give him a call, but make sure he knows he’s got to show up sober.

  With the crew accounted for, Glen and Wendell set themselves to readying the tack, checking the oil and the tires on each of the dirt bikes and four-wheelers. As Wendell lugged a gas can over and began filling the tanks in turn, he thought he might as well ask and so he did.

  —You ever had much to do with that Betts?

  Glen was bent to a four-wheeler, checking the tire pressure.

  —Brian Betts. Now there’s a hardscrabble son of a bitch. He’d know his way around the mountains. And I don’t believe he drinks at all. A religious type. Carol’d like him. Maybe we ought to skip Freddie and get Betts to cowboy for us.

  Glen straightened up and leaned this way and that to stretch his back, his work shirt sliding up over his hard, round belly.

  —Yeah, I know Betts. What’s your business with the man? I didn’t figure the two of you’d cross over much. Now, your dad, he and Betts would’ve been thick as thieves. They’d’ve talked all manner of subjects up and down.

  The stink of gasoline watered Wendell’s eyes. He blinked, and in the dark behind his lids he felt wires snap and whine. It all came back—those long-ago nights his father had taken him out to cut fences. He tried to harness in his mind’s eye the starlight such that he might see his father’s face—tried to pull that faint light down around him like a shawl—but the night proved too black, the dark complete.

  He glugged a tank full and capped the gas can and set it down. Wiped at his face with his shirtsleeves.

  —He was out with Tricia Wilson’s boy yesterday cutting fences.

  Glen paused his stretching.

  —Well, that’s downright interesting.

  —Between you and the BLM. Maybe a quarter mile of fence, near Lemonade Springs.

  —And he had the boy with him?

  —It was the boy who cut the fences. Betts just sat there on his four-wheeler.

  Glen spit, kicked at the oil-stained floor of the shop.

  —Christ Jesus. Betts ought to think a little harder on that. The boy ought to be in school.

  —You’re all right with him cutting government fences, then? Just not having the boy out there with him while he’s doing it?

  Glen looked at him hard. Spit again.

  —I ain’t got no love for the federal government, Wendell. You know that. The EPA, the BLM—I’ve had run-ins with the lot of them.

  Then began the familiar litany of complaints. First they couldn’t spray this or that on account of some damn butterfly that needed protecting. Then they couldn’t keep cattle on land they’d rightfully leased on account of “proper range-management directives” or some such shit. Then, in the ’90s, it was wolves, which Wendell more than anyone knew all about. On its own, any single thing might not have seemed like much, but ranching was a tight business. He knew he didn’t have to tell Wendell that. He’d seen as well as Glen had the banks taking enough farms, enough ranches, to know. It was the little bits here and there that would grind them down.

  —Us Hougens been out here three generations, Glen said, raising cattle and hay and cutting wheat, and now it’s like they want us out. It’s like if they had their way there wouldn’t be no ranchers at all, and just where do they think they’re going to get their beefsteaks and hamburgers then? They’d rather have wolves and buffalo and a bunch of half-naked hippies dancing around?

  Well, he didn’t mean to preach. Wendell knew as well as he did how they whittled on them. Glen took a breath and ran his hand over his bald head. But this Betts had ideas, he said. Just like Wendell’s old man. Betts figured the wolf hunt coming up would be a chance to show them. With this Obama in the White House they didn’t have time to waste. Glen had considered bringing Wendell in on it, with Verl being who he was, but the timing was bad. It wasn’t so long after Wendell’s mother had passed that they first started talking, and now he had a boy to look after, and Glen would just as soon he stayed out of it and let the rest of them deal with the feds.

  —Who’s in on it? Wendell wanted to know.

  Glen grinned. Just about everybody! Young folks, town folks, even respectable folks like him. They might not all be as full of piss and vinegar as Betts was, but they’d had enough and knew it was time. Glen cocked an eyebrow at Wendell and waited a moment, as if to let him weigh in with his approval, then squatted down by the four-wheeler, busied himself with the valve cap, the tire gauge.

  Wendell took in the dusty air, the motes of dust riding the slanted light toward his lips as he breathed in
, then whirling away as he breathed out. He could, if he wanted, take two quick steps and launch his boot into the side of Glen Hougen’s head. Did he want to do that? He wasn’t sure. He turned and left the shop, crossed the gravel.

  How did Glen Hougen get to be the one to decide what Wendell ought and ought not do? How did Betts get to be the one to ride four-wheelers with his boy all day? How did he, Wendell Newman, end up the one who couldn’t fuck up or take a day to set a trapline for fear of losing his job? Was his father’s face long and lean, like his own? Or was that from his mother? He had her stone-blue eyes, he knew that much, but her face had been so bloated with medication by the end he wasn’t quite sure anymore. What had come down to him from his mother? From his father? What had come down to him at all?

  He wandered down to his truck and reached through the open window and grabbed at his can of Copenhagen. Popped it once with his finger and pinched up a chew, all those little glistening strands of cut tobacco. He’d picked up the habit when he was thirteen or fourteen because why not, because the only boys who didn’t were made fun of, because the only men who didn’t, he’d once heard an older boy say, were schoolteachers or worse. Wendell flicked the tobacco to the ground now and wiped his finger and thumb clean on the thigh of his jeans. Winged the half-full can off into the weeds beneath the gas tanks.