Battleborn: Stories

by Claire Vaye Watkins

  “I do some lapidary work,” he said.

  “You at the mine?”

  “Used to be. I retired.”

  Magda set her soup on the coffee table. She picked up a dusty piece of smoky quartz the size of a spark plug from the shelf beside her and let it rest in her palm. “So, what do you do out here?” she asked.

  “I make by,” he said. “I got a few claims.”

  “Gold?”

  He nodded and she laughed, showing her metal fillings, a solid silver molar. “This place is sapped,” she said, and laughed again. She had a great laugh, widemouthed and toothy. “The gold’s gone, old-timer.”

  “Gold ain’t all gone,” Harris said. “Just got to know where to look.” He pushed the mug toward her. “You should eat.”

  Magda regarded the soup. “I don’t feel good. Hungover.”

  Milo lifted herself and settled at Harris’s feet. Harris scratched the soft place behind her ear. “I drove you in from the lake bed,” he said, gesturing out front. “I got a standard cab. Small. You didn’t smell like you drank too much. Didn’t smell like you drank at all.”

  Magda set the quartz roughly on the coffee table and leaned back into the couch. “That’s sweet,” she said dryly.

  Harris walked to the pantry and returned. He set an unopened sleeve of saltine crackers in Magda’s lap. “My ex-wife ate boxes of these things.”

  “Good for her,” said Magda.

  “Especially when she was pregnant,” he said. “I suppose they were the only thing that settled her stomach. Used to keep them everywhere, on her nightstand, in the medicine cabinet, the glove box of my truck.”

  Magda touched her belly, then quickly moved her hand away. She considered the saltines for a moment, then opened the package. She took out a cracker and pressed the salted side against her tongue. “You can tell?” she asked, her mouth full.

  Harris nodded. “What, twelve weeks or so?”

  The question bored Magda, it seemed. She shrugged as though he’d asked whether she wanted to bust open a geode with a hammer and see what was inside.

  Carrie Ann had taken a hundred pictures of herself at twelve weeks. Polaroids. The film had cost a fortune. She wanted to send them out to family, but, as with so many of her projects, she never got around to it. So for months the photos slid around the house like sheets of gypsum. After she lost the baby, when he couldn’t stand the sight of them anymore, he collected every last one, took them to work and, when no one was around, threw them into the incinerator.

  He took the quartz into his own hand now and pointed it at Magda’s abdomen. “You want to tell me who did this to you?” He spit on the crystal and with his thumb buffed the spot where the saliva landed.

  “It was my boyfriend,” she said. She snapped another cracker in half with her tongue. “But he only did it because I asked him to.”

  Harris felt instantly sick. “Why’d he leave you then?”

  “Because he’s a fucking momma’s boy. He’d just finished when we saw BLM coming. That ranger goes to Ronnie’s church. We’re not supposed to be together.” She smiled. “He said he’d come back for me.”

  “Hell of a plan.”

  “You think I don’t know that? He just took off.” She folded another cracker into her mouth.

  “He could have killed you, hitting you like that.”

  “What were we supposed to do? His mom was threatening to send him to Salt Lake to live with his grandma just for going out with me.”

  “What about your folks?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Jesus,” Harris said softly.

  “I tried him.” Magda laughed. “La Virgen, too. Nothing.”

  Harris decided to let the girl be a while. He turned on the AM jazz station and had his evening smoke on the porch. Through the screen door came Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Fats Waller, Artie Shaw. When he returned, Magda was biting into the last saltine in the sleeve. “Can we turn this off?” she said, and without waiting for an answer hit the power button on the radio.

  Harris went to the pantry and brought out the whole box of saltines. He set it on the coffee table. “You want, you can take these with you.” She eyeballed the box. “I’ll give you a ride,” he said. “We got to get you home.”

  “I know. It’s just . . . I’m still feeling a little sick.” She combed her fingers through her hair. “I wonder would the ride upset my stomach even worse, you think? Probably I should stay here, just for the night. If that’s okay with you, Bud.”

  This was a lie, he knew, though her face gave up nothing. He didn’t like the prospect of explaining to the authorities why he was hiding a runaway. And there were her parents to consider. If he had a girl, he’d beat the living shit out of anyone who kept her overnight while he was looking for her. The county was full of men—fathers—who’d do the same or worse.

  And yet he said nothing, only sat for a moment with his hands on his knees and then walked to the linen closet to get the girl a quilt and a clean pillowcase. He’d take her home. First thing in the morning. The girl smiled up at him as he handed her the linens. What was one night?

  His sleep was fitful and often interrupted. He had to piss constantly these days and crossed the hall as quietly as he could, hoping the girl would not notice. When he did sleep he dreamed vile scenes of stomachs and fists, babies and blood. Once he woke sure he’d heard the throaty chafe of Magda’s voice at his bedroom door. Levántate. Around four a.m. he started to a faint knock, imagined. An erection strained against his shorts. It’d been some time since he was blessed with such and so he quietly took advantage. After, he slept soundly through the remaining nighttime hours.

  • • •

  Harris rose in the early violet of the morning, antsy with a feeling like digging on a fresh plot of land. He dressed in clean blue jeans, white cotton socks, boots and a fresh white T-shirt. He tucked an unopened pack of filterless Camels into his breast pocket, poured himself a mug of coffee and walked quietly through the living room to the porch, so as not to wake the girl.

  Carrie Ann had been gone since the spring of 1991, having cleared her Kewpie dolls and floral china out of the curio cabinets, wrapped them in newspaper, married a state trooper she’d met in Fallon while she was—yes—staying at her sister’s. She’d long since moved with the man to Sacramento. Their miracle baby was almost sixteen. And still Harris accommodated her by smoking outside.

  He’d stirred the shit a little when, a new bride, she forbade him from smoking in the house. He went on about a man’s home being his own and hadn’t he earned the right, but in truth he didn’t mind being shooed outdoors. He was even patient later, when she implied that his smoking—combined with his single glass of bourbon in the evening—was the reason they were having such a hell of a time conceiving again, that he ought to take better care of himself, and finally that he didn’t give a shit whether they made a baby or not. But it could not be said that Harris made things easy for his young wife. He never held Carrie Ann’s temper against her—in his head he forgave her before she even apologized—but just the same he never let on how it soothed him when she let off steam, that seeing her angry was effortless next to seeing her hurting. And where was the harm, he figured, in letting his hotheaded wife guilt herself into a steak dinner, a foot rub, a blow job?

  Somewhere in their bickering Harris decided to cut back, to exercise a grown man’s discipline. But what was once discipline had over the years become mindless routine, four smokes a day: morning, after lunch, midafternoon and sundown. His cigarettes helped mark the passage of time, especially on days that seemed all sun and sky, when he scolded poor Milo just to hear the sound of his own voice. The dependable dwindling of his cigarette supply reassured him that he hadn’t been left out here, that eventually he would have to ride into town and things would still be there,
that the world hadn’t stopped whirling.

  Magda was awake now, and he could hear her shifting on the couch. He rubbed his cigarette out on the side of the Folgers can he kept on the porch and dropped the butt inside. In the living room, the sun was filtered through the yellowed paper window shades, lighting the room warmly. Harris let the screen door swing shut behind him. Magda’s lids lifted at the soft schwack.

  She arched her back, stretching catlike. “Morning,” she said.

  “Coffee?” he said.

  She made a face and pulled the old quilt up under her arms. She’d slept in her clothes. “Mind if I shower?”

  “We should get you back.”

  “Come on, Bud. I reek.” She looked up at him, smiling sweetly. “You don’t want to ride in that cab with me.”

  It had been a long time since a woman had tried to convince him of anything. “Be quick,” he said. “Hot water don’t last but twenty minutes. Pump leaks.” She shuffled down the hall, still wrapped in the quilt. He called down after her, “I apologize for the hard water.”

  “It’s all right,” she said, poking her head out the bathroom door, her shoulders already naked. “We got hard water, too.”

  Steam soon billowed from underneath the door, thickening the air in the hall. Water beaded on the metal doorknobs and hinges. Harris heard the squeak of her bare feet pivoting against the porcelain. From what he’d seen of her while she slept, it wasn’t difficult to imagine the rest. He busied himself cleaning the coffeemaker and filling Milo’s water dish, though the dog preferred to drink from the toilet.

  Eventually, the pipes squealed closed and the bathroom door opened. Harris turned to see Magda standing in the doorway, one of his thin maroon bath towels tucked around her like a cocktail dress, her hair wet-black, curling at her shoulders, her bare collarbones. She held her dirty clothes in a wad under her arm. Milo limped to her. The girl bent and scratched the dog under the chin. Without looking up, she said, “Mind if I borrow some clothes?”

  Harris was uneasy at the idea of her pilfering his drawers, her fingers running over the flecks of mica among his graying underwear. But better that than him choosing clothes for the girl. “Go ahead,” he said. “Bedroom’s on the left.”

  “Bud.” She turned, smiling, strands of wet hair clinging to her skin. “This house’s got four rooms. I been in three of them.”

  When Magda emerged from the bedroom she wore a black T-shirt, a pair of tall white socks pulled to her knees with the heels bulging above her ankles, and Bud’s royal blue swim trunks. They were old, like everything in this place—except Magda herself—with yellow and white stripes running up the sides. They were short, even on her small frame. She must have hiked them up.

  She stood in the doorway dipping the pad of her middle finger into one of his dented pots of Carmex and running the finger over her lips until they glistened.

  “What are we doing today?” she said.

  “Doing?”

  “Let’s go swimming,” she said. “Bet you know all the hot springs.”

  “Swimming? Sweetheart, this ain’t sleepaway camp.”

  She sat cross-legged in the recliner, setting it rocking and squeaking. “You’re too busy?”

  The only thing he’d been busy with in two years was her. “Somebody’s bound to be looking for you.”

  “Nobody’s gonna come looking for me,” she said. She got up and walked out the door.

  Harris wished something painful she was right. He wiped his hands dry on a dishrag and followed her out to the porch.

  “Come on now. We have to get you home.”

  “I’m not going home.”

  “Why not? Because you did something dumb? Because your novio’s a son of a bitch? That don’t mean nothing. Plenty of girls your age get into this situation.”

  “Bud,” she said, turning to him and squinting in the sun.

  “What about your parents? They’re probably scared out of their minds.”

  “Bud,” she said again.

  But he went on, partly because she needed to hear it and partly because he didn’t at all mind the sound of someone else’s voice saying his name over and over again. “Shit, kid, if I was your dad—”

  “You’re not.”

  “I’m just trying to say—”

  “Bud, you’re a fucking idiot,” she said, laughing that mean laugh into the open expanse of valley. “You think I’m worried about my boyfriend? The Mormon virgin?” She laughed again. “I told Ronnie we got pregnant by taking a fucking bath together. Want to know what he said? ‘I heard that happens sometimes.’” She lifted the T-shirt and swept her hand across her belly, her bruise, the way a person might brush the dirt from a fossil to expose the mineralized bones underneath.

  Harris said, “Who, then?”

  “Don’t ask me that.” She put her middle finger into her mouth and scraped some of the black polish off with her bottom teeth. “Please don’t.”

  They stood staring a long while, her at the valley and him at her. He watched her come right up against crying, then not, instead saying, “Fuck,” which was what he wanted to say but his mouth had gone dry.

  “It’s all right,” he said, finally. “Let’s go for a swim.”

  She looked to him. “Really?”

  “I’ll get you some shoes.”

  • • •

  They left Milo behind and took Route 40 in the direction of town for fifteen miles, and even though Harris kept saying, “It’s all right,” he could tell Magda didn’t trust him. She sat stiff, with her right hand on the door handle, and wouldn’t look him in the eye until he took the Burro Creek turnoff and Gerlach began to shrink behind them.

  Some heifers were grazing on the long swaths of bluegrass and toadflax that had sprung up on either side of the spring, bright plastic tags dangling from their ears. The truck rolled to a stop at the edge of the alkali field, and a few of them lifted their heads to notice, but most kept their mouths pressed to the ground, chewing the dry grasses. Harris shut off the truck. “Here we are.”

  “It’s beautiful, Bud. I didn’t even know this was out here.” Magda got out of the truck and shuffled through the tall grass in Harris’s bed slippers. Harris followed her to where the water ran downhill from the spring to a clear, rock-bottomed pool.

  “It’s Indian land,” he said. “Technically.”

  She pulled the slippers and socks from her feet. “Those Indians have all the luck.”

  He sat and watched her dip herself into the water, clothes and all. Wet to her waist, she turned to him. “You coming?”

  “Nah.”

  She stumbled on a loose rock and slipped farther down into the water. “Come on. Aren’t you hot?”

  Harris shook his head, though he was burning up.

  Magda pinched her nose and dipped her head under, pushing her hair from her face with her free hand. When she came up she said, “That feels good.” She paddled a weak breaststroke over to a half-submerged boulder and hoisted herself onto it. She lay there on her back, the wet clothes pasted to her body.

  Harris looked away. He dug his fingers into the dirt around him—a habit—looking absently for something to catch the glint of the sun. Magda sat up and said, “What were you like as a kid, Bud?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Come on. It’s just us. What kind of stuff did you do?”

  “Regular kid shit, I guess.” He sifted a handful of dirt through his fingers.

  “Like?”

  “I used to sleep outside. With my friends. My best friends were these brothers. Lucas and Jimmy Hastings. Their folks had a cattle ranch, out by where the fairgrounds are now. We’d go out on their land.”

  “But what did you do?”

  “We just talked, I guess. Shot the shit.”<
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  “About what?”

  He pinched a dirt clod between his fingers. “About moving away. We were just kids.”

  “To where?”

  “Reno, mostly. Or Salt Lake. Sacramento. San Francisco. New York. They were all the same to us back then. The big city.” Harris laughed at himself a little, recalling. “We used to stay up all night, just listing the places you could take a girl in a city. One of us guys would say, ‘To the park.’ And another would say, ‘A museum.’ And another would say, ‘The movies.’ That was our favorite, the movies. Whenever somebody said the movies, we’d all together say, ‘The movies,’ all slow. Like a goddamn prayer.”

  Magda slipped from the rock into the water and went slowly under. Harris let himself watch this time, watched her belly submerge, her small breasts with his T-shirt clinging to them, then her shoulders, her jaw and lips. She arched her back under the water and pushed herself to the surface again, leading with her sternum, the ruts of her ribs visible beneath the soaked cloth, her nipples tight and buttonish. Drops dripped from her brows, her eyelashes, the tip of her nose, the outcropping of her bottom lip. She gathered her hair in her hand and wrung the water from it.

  “What?” she said, like she didn’t know.

  Looking again to his fingers buried in the earth, he said, “I haven’t thought of the Hastings brothers in thirty years. Sounds stupid, to say that’s what we did around here.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” she said. “That’s what we do now.”

  On the drive back, Magda unbuckled her seat belt and took off the slippers. She leaned against her door and stretched her bare legs across the seat between them. Soon she was asleep with her head against the window, one long line from her stretched neck down to the bottom of her bare feet. A damp mineral smell filled the cab. Their bodies bounced lightly from the washboard road, and her raisined toes sometimes touched his thigh. He went hard again. Good Lord, he thought, sixty-seven years old and behaving like an adolescent.

  • • •

  After a dinner of boiled hot dogs, Harris smoked his evening cigarette on the porch and watched the sunset burning in the distance. The sky settled into strata of pale blue atop gold and flame orange and a swath of clouds colored lavender and coral and an indigo so dark they seemed hunks of coal hovering above the range. Nearest the sun the sky was the wild red of a wound, like the thing had to be forced below the horizon. A single sandhill crane moved soundlessly across the sky. A sunset was nothing, Harris knew, dust particles, pollution, sunlight prismed by the slant of the world. Still, it was pretty.