Fall Back Down When I Die

by Joe Wilkins

  Maddy. It was Maddy.

  Maddy!

  Gillian woke soaked in sweat, her heart a blood-hammer, every mad, frantic heartbeat banging the gong of her head. She stumbled to the bathroom, popped three aspirin, and drank a glass of water. She leaned on the sink, breathed, trembled. Drank more water. Dust swam in the low light of the frosted window, the motes turning loop-the-loops and figure eights.

  In the kitchen, on the counter, there was a note from Maddy: Pizza tonight with the charity-drive organizers. I’ll be late. Maybe ten or eleven? Love you, M.

  She must have passed out before Maddy came home last night—thank God she’d had the sense to make it to her bedroom—and had missed her daughter this morning as well. She hadn’t really seen her in days now. And what day was it? Gillian grabbed at Maddy’s phone, forgotten atop the microwave, and clicked it to life: Friday, October 2, 11:17 a.m. A hot wave of shame rolled through her. She remembered swaying in the kitchen, the wine long gone, Maddy still not home, and reaching for the handle of vodka in the pantry, taking a pull straight from the plastic bottle. White stars exploding in her skull.

  For a time she simply wandered the house in her flannels, feeling terrible. She thought to call in sick but it was too late for that. Kent might cover for her. She sat at her computer and the glare of the screen spiked through her eyes and sent shards of pain arcing through her skull. She breathed high and hard, but there was only pain, and more pain, and shame. She would simply have to face it.

  She opened her eyes and typed in the names. She couldn’t find anything on Rowdy Burns. The only stories that mentioned Wendell Newman were six and seven years old, all about high-school basketball—Tiny Delphia Poised to Make a Deep Run at State—though she couldn’t find anything about Delphia actually making State, which pleased her at first, then saddened her. There were more than a hundred schools in Montana’s Class C, the designation for the smallest high schools, most often rural and remote. Of those, not many were smaller than Delphia, which in most years had only twenty or twenty-five students in the entire high school. If they had made State, if tiny Delphia had won a game or two, Gillian could have reveled all the more in the ridiculous unfairness of such luck blessing Wendell Newman, reveled in her own sense of the moral imbalance of the world, the way she’d felt at once crushed but giddy by the absurdity of George W. Bush mentioning clean coal or claiming they were winning in Iraq. She stared at the current headline of the Billings Gazette. Some county commissioner was suing the Obama administration over environmental regulations.

  Gillian heaved herself up. She needed a glass of water. She drank it down—the water cool and good going down her throat, cold in her belly—and filled the glass again. She saw out the window above the kitchen sink the neighbor’s tiny dog sitting smack-dab in the middle of her backyard, staring right at her, shivering with small-dog fury. She hated that animal. She took a long drink of water and turned from the window, and the dog—Bitsy, that was its name—exploded in a series of choking barks, each high yap lancing Gillian’s skull.

  She sat at her computer again. He had been taken from her by meanness and ignorance and idiocy, and there was nothing that would ever change that. But still she felt she owed her allegiance to the better world, even if it meant she had to sorrow and rage over the actual one. She searched again, this time just for Newman and Montana. A few militia sites came up, all referencing the father, the murderer, Verl. Gillian scrolled past these—she knew that story through and through—and clicked on something about a Lacy Newman, who had been sentenced a couple of weeks ago, here in Billings, for drug possession and child neglect and endangerment. There was a picture alongside the story—a skinny woman in a jumpsuit in the foreground, head hung, dirty blond hair covering half her face, and to the back right, in the grainy, pixelated shadows of the courtroom, a clean-shaven, lean-looking man. He was staring at the girl, his gray felt cowboy hat in his hands.

  Wendell Newman.

  She went for a run, forced herself to turn up the road that led to the trails below the Rimrocks. Her breath came hard. Her heart juddered and shook. Liquor and sour wine burned from her pores. Not even slowing, she leaped from the sidewalk onto the dusty trail, made it over the first hill, then stopped, put her hands on her knees, and retched. Nothing but bile, water, and the chalk of aspirin, all of it dripping down the blue-gray leaves and woody stems of a sagebrush. She felt better after that and ran nearly four miles, all the way to Shiloh Road. Her headache was gone, and her heart, despite the run, had somehow slowed. She’d be ready for her Saturday run with Maddy, she thought, walking back, her fingers laced behind her head. Ready for her run with her daughter.

  At the house she ate a piece of wheat toast with peanut butter, then drank another glass of water. She called Kent and got his voice mail. She told him she was upset about how he’d handled the situation with Rowdy but apologized for missing work. All of this had been really sudden, she said, and had sent her to some places she hadn’t been in a while. She needed to get herself together, but she would be back on Monday.

  She poured herself some orange juice and drank it down, then found herself, giving in, making her way upstairs and stepping into her closet and unlatching the small wooden door that led to the attic. Up the ladder she went, and with a hand on the ceiling for support, she stepped down onto the joists as the warm, mousy air enveloped her. She moved a box or two, a blue plastic bin full of Maddy’s old toys, and there they were—Kevin’s rifles, wrapped in garbage sacks.

  Downstairs, she laid them out on her bed and unwrapped them. He’d always taken good care of his things—a trait left over from his days on the ranch, where, he always said, you had to make do with what you had—and his guns were yet beautiful, the wood gleaming, the steel slick and blue-dark. She hefted the smallest, a .22, set it against her shoulder, as he’d taught her, and stared down the length of the barrel and out the window, tracking the path of a yellow maple leaf skittering down the street. She picked up the biggest rifle, the 30.06, an elk-hunting rifle. She’d fired this one before as well. He’d started her out hunting deer, but the winter Maddy was three, they had gone out together for elk in the Bulls, on Glen Hougen’s land. They walked most of a day and saw nothing. Then late in the afternoon they came across four elk cows grazing in the long, sunset light. Kevin let her have the first shot—a good shot, just under a hundred yards, with the elk stepping slowly, grazing—and she nailed a big cow. As they stood above the animal, Kevin smiled and offered her a tug off his flask. The whiskey boiled down through her, and as the sky went seven shades of red, they knelt and gutted the elk. Afterward she waited there with her kill as Kevin hiked back for the truck. The elk’s hollow belly steamed in the cold air, and wind rivered the dead grass. The sky blackened. She waited a long time, but at last there was the sound of the engine, and the headlights bobbed in the night, and she knew Kevin was coming for her.

  Gillian drew a bead now on Bitsy, who sat in rigid concentration at the fence, just waiting for someone to walk by. She pulled the trigger. A sharp, dry click.

  She showered and crawled into bed naked and napped and didn’t dream or even shift in her sleep, the rifles dark and still beside her. She woke feeling truly rested for the first time in days. It was nearly five p.m. She could make a nice meal for herself and Maddy, who should be home anytime. She tossed a few of her last garden tomatoes, tart golden cherries, into a pan with olive oil and garlic and a few slivers of sage. She boiled linguine and stirred in the mixture, along with a little of the salty pasta water, then stir-fried it all in the cast-iron. It wasn’t until she plated it, and made a salad of arugula and balsamic reduction to accompany it, that she remembered Maddy wouldn’t be home for dinner.

  After dumping one of the plates into a Tupperware and putting it in the fridge, she took her own and a glass of water—there wasn’t any wine in the house, thankfully—to the back deck, where she sat in the evening shade. For company she turned on the outside speakers, All Things Considered on
Yellowstone Public Radio. More on Obama’s health-care plan, the continued violence in Iraq, even a mention of the wolf hunt, the first of its kind in the nation, coming up in Montana.

  An iridescent-throated hummingbird darted and hovered at the feeder. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d filled it, which meant that Maddy, despite how busy she was at school, must have gone to the trouble of boiling water and sugar and refilling the feeder. Maddy had always loved birds, long before the fabled science project at Two Moon. Even when she was little she would point and exclaim at magpies and red-winged blackbirds but go silent whenever falcons and eagles circled high above in the white sky. Gillian twirled pasta on her fork and thought about how diffident and scattered Maddy had been this past month—quiet and withdrawn, home late, always forgetting her phone. Maybe it was just a little senioritis or, as Kent had intimated, some late, deserved rebellion. Still, she needed to figure out some way to spend more time with her daughter. Maybe they could bike to Two Moon again or, better yet, get up into the Beartooths one of these weekends. Bring the binoculars and guidebooks. Do a little bird-watching.

  The sun arced down, spangling the city, setting the mountains in the distance aflame, and minute by minute the air cooled. Gillian went in for a sweater. When she came back, the station had cut to local news. She finished her pasta and took a drink of water and something caught in her throat. She coughed. What had they just said?

  Gillian coughed and coughed and spilled her water. What was this about a “developing situation” in Delphia, Montana? She stood, tried to scoot back her chair but knocked it over, and the hummingbird at the feeder buzzed into flight and zipped away.

  Verl

  23?

  I wake in the dark and it is god-awful cold. I would get up and walk to warm myself but need sleep. I do not want to make mistakes. I say the sky is a bowl but that puts the bottom at the top. What is it like? The sky? The sickle moon a wolf’s tooth. The cold stars not salt or sugar but torn holes. Wolf-torn holes.

  Wendell

  THE PICKUPS IDLED FOR A TIME, THE CHUG-CHUG OF THE QUAD-CAB diesel and the high whine of the Chevy S-10, then the rumbling ceased, the doors to both swung open, and the men climbed out. The three in the S-10 held back, positioning themselves behind the wide-open doors. The other four set their hats and holsters and rifles to rights and came forward. Betts led the way. He wore black boots and camo pants, a green long-sleeved T-shirt, a brown vest, black sunglasses, and a camo ball cap. He didn’t carry a rifle, though he had a black pistol holstered at his chest and a black-handled knife at his hip. As if leashed, Freddie Benson walked three short steps behind Betts, still wearing his work clothes, cow shit and dust at the knees and cuffs. Freddie carried a scarred, unpolished 30.30 with open sights, and Wendell, despite the circumstances, felt a kind of pity for him, a wish that he wouldn’t stick out so. And he knew now why Freddie had skipped the beer this afternoon, why he hadn’t even come over to shake Wendell’s hand this morning. All those years ago, when they were rehearsing for Macbeth, Wendell had taken it upon himself to help Freddie remember his lines, and Freddie did remember once, but only in dress rehearsal, and only the once.

  Daniel McCleary flanked Betts on one side. Town kid that he was, McCleary had likely never ridden a horse in his life, yet he was done up anyway in boots, jeans, and a snap shirt, with a black Stetson on his head and honest-to-God pearl-handled six-shooters on his hips. Toby Korenko, hatless and a head taller than any of them, stood back by the S-10, along with two men Wendell didn’t recognize. Toby had finally lost the last few sections of his father’s ranch, and just a year earlier he and Starla had moved into a trailer in Delphia, where he’d taken the janitor’s job at the school, the same school he and Wendell had graduated from not so many years ago. Toby cradled an AR-15, and given his size—hands like plates, forearms as thick as pines—the gun resembled nothing so much as a child’s toy.

  It was such an out-of-place, ridiculous tableau that Wendell nearly laughed out loud. He was loose from the beer, happy for the light rushing down through the thin high clouds, happier yet that Maddy was here. And Betts, Freddie, Daniel, and Toby all struck him as downright silly—their seriousness, their staged movements and goofy getups.

  But the laughter went to gravel in his mouth when he saw the fourth figure walking toward him, on Betts’s other flank, unhurried, sure, serious as all the rest. It was Tricia Wilson’s boy, the pudgy, round-shouldered one whose name Wendell couldn’t remember. He held a black semiautomatic rifle with a pistol grip and threaded barrel.

  Between Wendell and the men, still in the V of her open car door, Maddy had tangled her hands in the scarf at her throat. She turned from the men to Wendell. And back to the men. She’d likely never seen men like this. Likely never seen so many guns. Wendell thought to say something, to reassure her, but then caught himself. He scanned the near trees, the dry creek north of the house, the hills and draws to the south. Where was Rowdy? Where was his boy? He swallowed and touched his back pocket, looking again for the can of Copenhagen that wasn’t there.

  Betts stepped forward.

  —How are you this evening, Wendell?

  Wendell brought his hand away from his empty pocket. Looked at Maddy, then at Betts.

  —I’m confused is what I am.

  Betts smoothed his mustache, and the corners of his mouth turned up into a smirk.

  —I hope I might clarify things, he said.

  Wendell had been ready for Rowdy to rush down the hill, his arms loaded with wood. Ready to take Maddy’s hand, to show her the long blue view from the ridge and the meadowlarks throwing their little heads back and singing up and down the dry creek, to lead her around to the firepit and touch a match to the slenderest sticks and step back, watch the flame and shadow play across her face, and Rowdy’s, and to be warm and amazed. But now, beyond anything he had been ready for, anything he had ever wished or hoped or feared, this, whatever it was, had come to him. He cleared his throat, nodded to Betts.

  —I’ll stand here and listen but if by the time you finish, I’m still confused, what then?

  —Then we leave.

  —You leave?

  —We’ve been wanting to talk with you, Wendell. That’s all. Don’t take us for something we’re not. We’re men who know right for right. I imagine by now you’ve heard of us. It was us that left the wolf medallion for you on your table when the door was open.

  The wind turned in the trees. A fist of blackbirds lifted over the trailer and veered away.

  —But I personally would be disappointed if you remained confused, Betts said. Your father meant a lot to me. I bet you didn’t know that. I was in Oregon when I first heard about him. They were closing the mills left and right, and we were all of us out of work. Everyone I knew was in logging somehow or other. Either running a saw or driving a truck or working the mill.

  Betts sniffed and crossed his arms over his chest.

  —My father shot himself, he said. That’s what my old man did after he was laid off, and then rehired, and then laid off again, and then had his truck repossessed, and really his whole goddamn life stolen out from under him. Stolen all for the sake of the spotted goddamn owl. But your old man didn’t knuckle under. No, he refused to be a victim. He didn’t shove the barrel up under his own chin. He shouldered and shot back, shot that goddamn game warden who should have known better. Your father’s a hero, is what he is. We admire the hell out of him for what he did, and we hope Verl Newman’s own son might also see his way to what’s right. Might stand with us.

  Like wind-driven rain the light slanted down, burnishing the rusted steel of pickups, the dirty shine of gravel, the ash-black barrels of rifles, and Wendell stood all the straighter against its wash, against the words he’d just heard. There was the man Betts spoke of: the fence cutter, the wolf killer, the murderer, the man who’d run with his rifle into the mountains a dozen years ago and disappeared forever. And there was the man who yet at times stepped from the shadowed e
dges of Wendell’s memory: the joke teller, the belly-laugher, the mountain trapper who’d take a knee as if in prayer to pluck a spray of Indian paintbrush for Wendell’s mother. Wendell had spent half his life fatherless now, and in his father’s absence he’d never been forced to reconcile these two visions. In the broken landscapes of his heart he could cherish the father who had a sprig of flower tucked behind his ear and blame the other father for everything—for Lacy’s taking off, for his own drunken fuckups, for his mother’s slide into despair.

  There had been the early hangers-on and cheerleaders, a few of them locals, a few of them jackbooted, wild-eyed out-of-towners, who showed up at the trailer to offer their services to his mother during the manhunt. And though over the years Wendell had continued to hear—toward last call at the Antlers an old farmer might spill a story, or at a potluck, someone might sidle up—about the cattlemen’s associations, about red-faced politicians, about militia types who wanted to make a martyr of his father, wanted somehow to call what he had done heroic, Wendell had long ago shut himself away from all that. He could still remember a man whose yellow eyes were loose in his skull going on and on about what a hero his father was, how right and brave. Snow was coming down, and he and his mother knew by then that his father was truly gone, one way or another. Wendell, twelve years old, stood there in the screen door with his mother for a time. Then he went and got his .22, slammed a shell into the chamber, and sent the yellow-eyed man on his way.

  The wind, the light, the trucks and guns. Wendell tried to speak, to unravel this sudden knot, but Maddy, at Betts’s words, had jerked, a string in her gone taut, and made a sound that was strangled and low. She shook her head at Wendell, her face simply falling apart, and stumbled back into her car. She revved the engine and tried to back out, rocks kicking from beneath her tires. Betts, Freddie, and Daniel stepped aside, but the Wilson boy stayed right where he was. He wasn’t even looking. He was pointing the other way, down the road.