From the Black Hills

by Judy Troy

  “No,” they’d told him.

  “Stay out all night, then,” he’d said coldly, and gone inside.

  AT noon, Mike’s mother came home for lunch, shaking off her umbrella on the patio and bringing into the kitchen the smell of rain. “Were there any calls?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, lying so that he didn’t seem so involved, somehow. Tom DeWitt kept doing that to him, Mike thought—creating secrets between the two of them, and even when Mike could see it coming, he didn’t seem able to stop it. It just kept happening.

  “That’s good, I suppose,” his mother said, taking a pot of soup from the refrigerator and heating it up on the stove. She turned around and smiled at Mike. “I had a good class this morning. You know how I judge that? Because when there’s ten minutes left I suddenly remember what I have to come home to—the situation, I mean.”

  “That happens to me sometimes,” Mike said, relieved that she was referring to it. “I’ll forget about it for a while.” He moved aside his mother’s books in order to set the table.

  “Some of those are for you,” she said, “from your list. I got them out of the library.” Mike’s high school guidance counselor had given book lists to everyone going on to college.

  “Just don’t make me read them.”

  “What?” his mother said sharply.

  “It’s a joke,” he told her. “It’s what Cory Burris said about a book Mrs. Rush tried to hit him with.”

  His mother wasn’t smiling anymore. “I worry about you spending time over there,” she said.

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I guess it is,” she said. “I guess it’s Mrs. Rush who should worry about Donetta coming over here. It must seem funny to people now, what a snob I was.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I know you didn’t. But it was implied in what you said.”

  They ate lunch without speaking further. It was useless to talk to her, Mike thought, even though she’d come home in a good mood. Things he thought were funny she didn’t; she was always trying to be the parent. She couldn’t sit there and just listen.

  He washed the dishes as she got her books together. “I have an afternoon class,” she said. “Then a tutoring session with Jim Reynolds and two others. Jim Reynolds is the only one I look forward to.” She put a lipstick into her purse and came toward Mike as if she wanted to hug him good-bye. When he kept his hands busy with the dishes, she hesitated, then opened the door. A few minutes later he heard her backing the car down the driveway.

  MIKE slept most of the afternoon. He dreamed of a rainy night in which his father was being chased through a cornfield with Lucky, their dog that had been killed so long ago. There was a woman with him. There was a building in the distance, a cross between a silo and a prison, and Lucky was half running, half flying. Close by on a playground, a kid was hanging by one hand from the top of a slide. Mike woke up sweating.

  It was five-thirty, and the rain had stopped. The house was silent and empty. He got on his motorcycle and rode through town on the wet streets, past his father’s insurance agency, which now had STUART WELLS written on the door, past the apartment where Mary Hise had lived, and north on County Road 51 to Little Falls Park, where Mary used to go with her dog.

  The park consisted of hay fields and cottonwoods, and a rocky stream wound through it. Some summers it dried up completely, but now it was shallow with rain. Mike walked along the gravel path. During his freshman year, he’d been a member of the track team, and the coach had driven them out there to run. Mike wasn’t fast enough and didn’t focus, according to his coach. He’d just run and think. He’d solve math problems in his head. At the end of the season he quit the team but kept on running, and Donetta started running with him. “So I get to spend more time with you,” she had said. Even from the beginning she’d made it clear to Mike how much he meant to her.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” he’d told her. “It makes you easy to take advantage of.”

  “Why would you take advantage of me?” she’d asked.

  She didn’t understand, still, that you should always hold back, keep part of yourself to yourself. Otherwise, you’d be affected by external things all the time—by what people said and did, by the way they acted toward you. You’d be like a rootless tree, Mike thought, too shallow to live. His father had been like that. That was why his father had cried all night when the dog died. That was why he’d taken an overdose of pills when his college girlfriend broke up with him. Mike thought about that incident now, as he walked along the path. Did his father think that trying to kill himself would bring the girlfriend back? Because why would you want somebody who didn’t want you?

  The sky began to clear before dusk, the clouds dissipating and the horizon peach-colored and bright. The fields were golden green from the rain. A woman came toward Mike, jogging, her Border collie running behind her.

  Mary Hise will never see this park again, he thought. She’ll never have another dog. She’ll never pose for another picture.

  He walked until it was too dark to see across the field. He tried to keep his mind blank, but thoughts about Mary came into it, serious ones: the baby she’d had; how uncertain she’d looked in her high school photograph; the fact that she’d died alone.

  Mike kept walking, just looking at the darkness.

  ELEVEN

  JOSH Mitchell came back to Wheatley on a Sunday at the end of July. He had a court hearing to go to: Duane King had attacked his mother. He’d broken her wrist and bruised her face, and Josh was scheduled to testify. He’d seen him threaten her once. “It was a few weeks before my dad and I moved,” he told Mike Sunday night. “I kicked him in the balls.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was too pissed off to talk about it.” After a moment he added, “She was nuts to be with him.”

  It was after dark, and they were at Crow Lake, sitting in Josh’s car with the doors open, drinking beer and waiting for Donetta and Josh’s ex-girlfriend, Pam, to drive out and meet them. It wasn’t certain that Pam would come. She was dating somebody else now, somebody older, from Spearfish. And she was supposedly still angry at Josh for breaking up with her last winter.

  “She expected me to marry her or some bullshit like that,” Josh said now. “So I told her to back off and get real, and she punched me.”

  “You deserved it,” Mike said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just quoting Donetta.”

  “Donetta hates me,” Josh said.

  “Hate’s a strong word. Detest might be closer.” Mike opened another beer and put his bare foot up on the cracked dashboard. Josh’s car was an old, beat-up Lincoln his father had traded an ancient Airstream for. Josh’s father was a geologist, but he also collected junk that he sold or traded for more junk. Josh’s mother had wanted him to get out of that business. They’d fought constantly. It was no surprise to Mike that they got divorced. The surprise was that Josh’s mother had been sneaking around with Duane King, who already had three ex-wives. Mike and Josh had gone to school with his son, who everybody figured would end up in prison.

  “Do you think Pam’ll come?” Josh asked.

  “Donetta will. I don’t know about Pam.”

  Josh got out of the car and took off his T-shirt and jeans. He walked in the darkness to the edge of the lake, dove in, and swam underwater until he was out deep.

  “This feels so fucking good,” he yelled to Mike.

  Mike had gone swimming earlier, when they’d first gotten there. He’d worked with Neil and Ed all day, and the temperature had been up to 104. Lee-Ann had come out of the house once, in cutoff jeans and the top of a two-piece bathing suit. Mike had gotten an erection as soon as he saw her. He’d felt like unzipping his jeans right there, in front of her husband and brother-in-law, to prove to her that he was okay again, and as attracted to her as ever. It was such a crazy thought that it scared him. It made him think that anybody could become cr
azy just by doing a crazy thing. It could happen in a second if you let it.

  Mike heard Donetta’s car. He got out, stood behind a tree, then jumped out in front of her headlights.

  “I knew you’d do that,” she said. “I just said that to Pam.”

  “She did,” Pam said.

  They had carry-out boxes with them from Andell’s Diner—cheeseburgers, onion rings, and Cokes. Donetta spread a blanket on the ground between the cars, and Pam said hello to Mike. She didn’t ask where Josh was. She and Mike had been friends in high school; they’d sat next to each other in advanced calculus and worked together on the problems. She was tall and long-legged, with large breasts and a pretty face. She looked older than she was.

  “Hey,” Josh said. They couldn’t see him, but they could hear his footsteps. He went behind the car to put on his jeans.

  “So what’s going on?” Pam said in a less-than-friendly way.

  “Nothing,” he told her. “Everything. A lot of shit has happened.”

  “No kidding,” Mike said.

  “I don’t mean just that,” Josh said. “Things seem different, like I’ve been gone for years. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just me. It probably is. It’s probably just me being weird like I get sometimes.” He was talking rapidly. For as long as Mike had known him, people had thought of Josh as cocky, but to Mike he’d always seemed more nervous than people realized.

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” Pam said. “I always liked her.”

  “She’s not dead,” Josh said. “I mean, it spooks me to hear you say it like that.”

  “I was just being polite.”

  “Okay. That’s okay then.” Josh took a breath, and they sat down on the blanket to eat. “I’m hungry as shit,” Josh said. “Thanks, Donetta. I’ll pay you for it.”

  “Forget it.” It was the first thing Donetta had said to him. She was leaning back against Mike, her legs outstretched between his. She’d once told Mike that when it came to girls Josh was like dynamite—dangerous at a distance, deadly up close.

  “Donetta gets a discount, even for take-out,” Mike told Josh.

  “It was still nice of her to think of it,” Josh said.

  “I’m a nice person,” Donetta said.

  The night was hot and hazy—a few stars but no moon,and lightning too far in the distance for them to hear thunder.

  “My dad said to tell you hi,” Pam said to Josh. “Can you believe it? He started liking you the second you stopped liking me.”

  “What second was that?” Josh said. “Because I must have missed it. I don’t remember it happening.”

  No one spoke. Donetta took Mike’s hand. After a minute they got up and left Josh and Pam alone. They found their way down the dark trail to the water, undressed, and swam halfway out into the lake. They were both strong swimmers, but Mike was faster. He got there a minute or so before she did and waited for her to catch up. Then they headed for the bank on their left and pulled themselves up onto a limestone ledge that jutted out over the water. They lay close to each other in the darkness.

  “You should give Josh a chance,” Mike said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not like you not to.”

  Donetta was silent. Then she said, “That’s a mean thing to say. It’s like saying, ‘You’re proving you’re not as good a person as you think you are.’ You’re not even thinking about the way Josh is. You just make it all about me.”

  “You’re so fucking smart sometimes,” Mike said.

  Donetta sat up, her long hair dripping. “I hardly ever feel smart,” she said. “I worry that you’ll end up with somebody a lot smarter than me. And then when I do say something smart, you act like it makes you mad. So I just don’t know what person you want me to be.”

  “Lie back down next to me,” Mike said.

  “No. You can’t just make it all right like that.”

  He reached up and touched her smooth skin, which seemed to shine in the darkness. He pressed his hand against her back and felt her heart beating; touching her was like holding a bird, he thought, the way she seemed too small to be alive. And suddenly his face was wet. It just came from nowhere—more like rain than tears. He wanted to say that he was sorry for a hundred different things. He felt sorry for things that had nothing to do with her. He’d apologize to Mary Hise if he could. He’d say, My father didn’t mean to do what he did.

  “Mike?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  He couldn’t answer, even though he could hear how frightened she was. “Don’t be mad at me,” he said finally. “I can’t stand it right now.”

  “Okay. It’s all right. I’m not mad.” She lay down and put her arms around him.

  “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Mike said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “It’s okay,” Donetta said. “I’m sorry.”

  She was saying what he should be saying to her. Things had gotten turned around, somehow—as if the responsibility lay with the darkness or the trees or the moonless sky. And whatever had happened to him was disappearing already, or going under the surface, like a rock thrown into water. He was all right again.

  He and Donetta kissed. All around them in the black night were the sounds of insects and frogs. The noises just took over the night. It made Mike want to imitate them, leave being a person behind and be this thing that didn’t require thought.

  “I like the sounds,” Donetta said. “I wish I could make them.” She’d read his mind like that before. Or maybe he’d read hers, he thought. Maybe he had that backward.

  They kissed more deeply. Donetta ran her fingers over his back, along his spine, from his neck down to the small of his back. Her breathing quickened with Mike’s, though in the end they didn’t let themselves have sex; the condoms were on shore, in the pocket of Mike’s jeans. Donetta wouldn’t take birth control pills. She’d feel slutty, she had told him; she’d feel like the kind of person who would fuck anybody. The only person she’d ever had sex with was Mike. The first time was just before her fifteenth birthday, in her empty house. She had said, afterward, “Isn’t it strange that it hurts the first time? Do you think every good thing is like that?”

  They swam back across the lake. Mike swam with her this time. He could see just flashes of her—a white arm, her face as she turned her head to breathe. She reached the shore before he did. He liked watching her—what he could see of her—walk naked out of the water. They didn’t know where Josh and Pam were.

  They dried off, dressed, and sat on the blanket, sharing a beer. They both heard Pam at the same moment—she cried out Josh’s name. She and Josh were in the backseat of Josh’s car.

  “She’s making a mistake,” Donetta whispered to Mike.

  He didn’t answer. He was thinking that Pam’s voice would come back to him in bed, that night, and the next time he and Donetta had sex. That was the difference between males and females. It was some ancient, inborn thing; therefore you didn’t have to feel bad about it. It kept you separate, which made you strong enough to look out for the females and offspring. That’s how they wrote about people in textbooks: males, females, offspring.

  Still, he felt bad when Donetta took his hand.

  “I wouldn’t want anyone besides you to hear me,” she whispered.

  They got up and walked along the lake, away from the cars, until they couldn’t hear anything human anymore.

  TWELVE

  WYLENE Moseley returned home to Colorado by herself.

  “We had her house watched,” Tom said to them Thursday night, after dinner. “We knew she was back twenty minutes after she got there.”

  He had come over to the house this time without calling first—to catch them off guard, Mike thought, to catch him off guard, because it was Mike who was the target. Mike knew that, even if his mother didn’t. His mother was the one to act too pleased to see Tom. She made him coffee and suggested they go outside on the patio, where it was cooler. It was dusk, and she lit cit
ronella candles to keep the mosquitos away. Tom didn’t sit down until she did.

  “Wylene met Glenn at a bar,” he told them. “A roadside place in the mountains. We knew about that bar earlier. The bartender remembered Glenn and Wylene leaving together. He said he remembered because he used to go out with a friend of hers.” Tom paused. “I figured he used to go out with Wylene. That’s the kind of thing people lie about to policemen.”

  Carolyn smiled, but Mike didn’t. His head had begun to hurt. He thought that it was starting to make him sick, seeing Tom DeWitt.

  “Why did she trust him?” his mother said.

  “They were close in age. He was polite. They liked the same music. She said that Glenn kept playing an old rock-and-roll song they both liked. Something about heaven. I can’t remember the name.”

  Mike knew but kept still.

  “It drives me crazy when I can’t remember something,” Tom said.

  “Is it important?” Carolyn asked.

  “No. But it’s in my mind somewhere. Let me think for a minute.” In the silence Mike watched Tom attentively survey the yard.

  “I know it had heaven in the title,” Tom said. “Heaven something or something heaven. Some word like star.”

  “Mike, you know a lot about music,” Carolyn said. “What song is he thinking of?”

  They were both watching him; his headache grew worse. “ ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ ” he said finally.

  “That’s it,” Tom said. He crossed his legs. Mike recognized his cowboy boots from the day he’d taken Mike to Mary Hise’s apartment. “How did you know it was that song in particular?” he asked Mike.

  “It’s famous.”

  “You and your dad must have the same taste in music,” Tom said.