Black River

by S. M. Hulse

  Wes took his hands from his pockets, held them in front of the dash vent. He thought about the last fiddle lesson. The way the instrument had started to sing again, the way “Black River” began to take shape in the canyon for which it had been named. That long trip for the sweatshirt.

  He reached across the cab and lifted the latch of the glove compartment. It fell open easily. He took in the contents in an instant, looked again before letting knowledge root itself in his heart. Maps. A flashlight. Napkins left over from a fast-food restaurant. Registration papers, owner’s manual, tire gauge.

  No gun.

  Dennis was gone when Wes got back to the house—his heavy horseshoeing boots and chore coat missing from the front closet—and he was still gone when the sheriff’s deputy pulled up outside the house a few hours later. The dark green pickup coasted to a stop beside Wes’s own truck; the weak afternoon sun reflected hard off the dark rack of lights atop the cab, and Wes squinted when he stepped onto the porch. The deputy was close to retirement age, his thick mustache and the short hair showing beneath his broad hat gone white. He walked stiffly toward the house, carrying a rumpled paper bag with a rolled-down top. He looked somehow uneasy in his uniform, though he must have worn it most of his life. “Mr. Carver,” he said, and it didn’t sound like a question.

  Wes nodded.

  The deputy reached the porch, extended a hand. “Deputy Randall Morrow,” he said. “With the Elk Fork County Sheriff.” The handshake was mercifully brief.

  “I guess you’re here about Scott.”

  Morrow shifted his weight onto his heels, put his hands on his heavy belt. The bag rested against his holster. “I understand you were close to him,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “He stole the revolver.”

  Morrow looked relieved not to be the one to bring it up, but he frowned a little and said, “You should’ve called when you learned it was missing.”

  “Just realized this morning,” Wes said. “Figured you boys would put it together in short order.”

  “Where did you keep it?”

  “Glove compartment,” Wes said. “Locked. Ain’t exactly a gun safe, I know, but I never guessed he’d bust into it.” That was true, Wes realized. He hadn’t thought twice about letting Scott see where he kept the revolver.

  “You really ought to keep your weapons better secured,” Morrow said. His voice lacked conviction.

  “Guess I know that now,” Wes said evenly. He took a step back onto the porch stairs, so he was a couple inches higher than Morrow. Cheap trick. The deputy could’ve followed if he’d wanted to, but he stayed on the gravel.

  After a minute, Morrow pulled the revolver out of the bag, handed it to Wes butt-first. “That yours?”

  Wes took the grip in his hand, turned it so the barrel shone in the light. He thought of this gun in Scott’s hand, aimed at other people, other children. He wondered how the weight of it—the weapon, what it could do—had felt to him. Whether he had liked it. He wondered, too, whether Scott had taken the time to put the revolver inside the trailer before coming back to sit beside Wes and take up his fiddle for that final lesson. Maybe he’d instead kept it tucked into the oversized pocket of his sweatshirt; maybe it had been there the whole time, that whole afternoon, waiting there while Wes deluded himself into thinking he was making a difference in Scott’s life. Had it been that close, this secret?

  “Mr. Carver.”

  “It’s mine.” Wes snapped the cylinder out. Empty, of course. “He didn’t get the ammunition from me,” he said. “I keep it separate, and it’s all there. Counted it this morning.”

  “There was no ammunition,” Morrow said. “Not so far as we can tell. The weapon was unloaded when it was recovered. We haven’t found any cartridges at the school or at the site of the collision. It’s possible, I suppose, that he dumped them somewhere between the two locations, but it hardly seems likely.”

  Wes passed his thumb across the rear of the cylinder, the voids of the chambers. Dennis had loaded the revolver when he’d taken it before their dinner table confrontation so many years ago. Wes had tapped the bullets into his palm after leaving the house that night; they’d rattled against one another in his trembling hand.

  “One of the students we interviewed said it looked to him like the chambers were empty during the incident at the school,” Morrow continued. He crumpled the paper bag into a tiny ball, clenched it in his fist. “But the sus—Bannon—was threatening him with the weapon at the time, and the student wasn’t willing to bet his life on it.” Morrow looked up at Wes, something reproachful in his eyes. “Those kids are awfully shook up.”

  “Don’t you try to lay blame on me for this,” Wes said.

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I done what I could to help that boy. I know folks want everything to be someone’s fault, but you ain’t gonna make it mine.” Wes turned the revolver around in his hand, extended the grip to Morrow. “I had my doubts about Scott Bannon from the day I met him. I thought for a while that maybe I’d been wrong, but I guess I wasn’t. He stole that gun. Busted a lock to get to it. Go look if you want.”

  Morrow didn’t take the revolver. “I came to give that back to you,” he said. “What I ought to do is put it into evidence, make you come down and file some paperwork. Maybe you’d get it back someday and maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you’d get a citation. But the way things turned out . . . Bannon didn’t hurt anyone but himself. I’ve worked this county all my life, Mr. Carver. I know who you are, and I know you’ve had more than your share of trouble in life. Didn’t think you needed more. That’s all.” He turned around, started back toward his truck with the same awkward, ambling gait with which he’d come.

  Wes watched him go, felt the burden of the revolver in his hand. He wanted to give it back, wanted to fling it into the river and never see it again. But he couldn’t even bring himself to put it down on the porch railing. He loosened and tightened his fingers on the grip, felt metal and wood more firmly against his skin. “Morrow,” he called.

  The other man slowed, turned like he’d been expecting Wes to stop him.

  “I ain’t justifying what Scott did,” he said. “Not by a long shot. Not ever. But those ‘shook-up kids’ ain’t exactly all sweetness and light, either. Ain’t as black and white as it seems.”

  Morrow nodded. “Never is.”

  At dinnertime, Wes set two places at the table and heated a can of stew. He kept Dennis’s half warm on the stove for a long while, finally emptied it into a plastic container and put it in the refrigerator. There were a handful of business cards on the door of the refrigerator—a veterinarian, a feed merchant, a dentist—a lone, washed-out photograph of a much younger Dennis riding a much younger Rio, and three comic strips cut from a newspaper. Wes lifted the corner of one to look at the underside; it was from the Spokane paper. Claire must have snipped them out and mailed them.

  Just before midnight, Wes heard Dennis’s truck pull up. A few minutes passed between the sound of the cab door slamming and Dennis’s tread on the porch steps. Checking on the horses, or finishing a cigarette. Dennis climbed the steps slowly. When he came inside, he glanced at Wes but didn’t speak. He braced one hand on the doorframe while he untied his boots, eased them off his feet. A stiffness to his movements—whether the extra weariness of this day or the regular burden of hard work, Wes couldn’t say. Hadn’t paid enough attention before. Dennis shrugged off his coat and hooked it over the back of the chair nearest the door. He sat, pulled a second chair away from the table and lifted his feet onto it. “Used to be I could shoe a dozen horses a day, regular,” he said. “Did eight today and I’m damn near crippled.”

  “There’s stew in the fridge,” Wes said, “if you want it.”

  “I’m not hungry.” He was picking at a scab on his wrist, stopped abruptly. “Maybe later.”

  Silence fell. Wes listened to the clock in the hall count the seconds. Same clock they’d had years ago, but he didn’t remember it being
so loud.

  “I stopped in to see Molly on my way home,” Dennis said finally.

  “How is she?”

  Dennis smiled, that hard, unamused smile he never aimed at anyone in particular. If there was one expression of Dennis’s that Wes had always hated, one expression he wished he never had to see again, that was it. “Well, she’s not so good, is she?”

  “I meant under the circumstances.”

  “I don’t know, Wes. How do you answer a question like that? I mean, is there a good way to be when your kid’s just killed himself?” He passed a hand over his face, letting his fingers drag against the skin. “I guess she’s hanging in there.”

  “Does she have someone taking care of her?” Claire had told him there’d been so many people wanting to help Sara after the riot they’d had to make a schedule. Hard to imagine there was any such clamor to look after Molly Bannon.

  “One of the nurses from the hospital was there,” Dennis said. “Told me she was staying the night.”

  “That’s good.”

  Dennis took his feet off the chair, leaned forward over the table, fingertips drumming absently on the wood. “The funeral’s Saturday. It’s going to be at some church in Elk Fork. Methodist, I think. Molly asked if you and I would each say a few words.”

  Wes sighed. He’d hoped not to have to get into this tonight. “I’m not gonna go, Dennis.”

  Dennis looked up, slow. “How’s that?”

  “I ain’t going to the funeral.”

  A long moment in which Wes couldn’t read Dennis’s expression one way or another, and then that damned smirk again.

  “Let’s just leave it,” Wes said. “Let’s not get into a big argument right now. Can we do that?”

  Dennis shook his head, one corner of his lips still turned up. “I am such an idiot,” he said. “A naïve fucking fool.”

  “Dennis—”

  “Here I was just starting to think that maybe I hadn’t given you enough credit all these years. I thought—despite a lifetime’s worth of evidence to the contrary—that maybe you were more compassionate than I realized. That maybe—and this is a fucking laugh—you’d actually changed.” He spread his arms wide. “But it turns out you’re the exact same rigid, sanctimonious bastard I remember.”

  Wes crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back in his chair. Tried to remind himself that his stepson was hurting. “I don’t think that’s fair.”

  “Fair?” Dennis stood, started pacing across the living room. It was too small to satisfy: a few steps one way, a few steps back. “Fair would be going to the funeral of a kid you pretended to care about.”

  “Don’t you tell me how I felt about Scott.”

  Dennis stopped in front of Wes, set both hands on the table, leaned in close. Wes smelled horses on him. Realized he’d always associated this scent with him, the coarse wildness of it. “I know exactly how you felt about him. You felt about him the same way you felt about me. You never trusted him, you were always waiting for him to fuck up, you cared about him in a half-assed way only so long as he was trying his damnedest to please you, and now that he’s disappointed you, you’re abandoning him.”

  Wes sat silent as long as he could. Kept his hands curled loose on the tabletop. Tried counting his breaths the way Claire was always telling him to do. Even so, he couldn’t keep his voice from rising with each word when he finally spoke. “First off, this ain’t about you. Did I abandon you? Yeah, Dennis, I guess I did. I know I hurt you, and I know I hurt your momma, and I’m sorry for both those things. If I had it to do over again, I’d try it another way. But I was doing the best I could. I was in pain, too. I guess I can’t expect you to understand that, but I sure wish you could.”

  Dennis leaned against the doorway leading to the kitchen. Looked like a gatekeeper of some kind. Weighing his story. His soul.

  “Second, this ain’t got nothing to do with being disappointed. Not now, and not back then. You didn’t disappoint me; you threatened my life with a loaded firearm. And Scott didn’t disappoint me; he terrorized a bunch of schoolkids. He gave himself power over people it wasn’t none of his business to have. And that goes way beyond disappointment.”

  Dennis eyed him critically. He was a little too calm, and that made Wes nervous. Dennis was a live wire, and that could be unpleasant, but Wes was used to that. This calculating, considering Dennis was an unknown. He sighed, pushed himself away from the doorframe. “You need to get the fuck over the riot, Wes.” He turned away and walked into the kitchen. Wes followed after a moment, found him leaning into the cupboard over the sink, stretching his arm into its farthest reaches. He pulled down a bottle hazed with dust, no label, amber liquid churning inside. Rooted around again and brought down two small, squarish glasses. He poured heavily into one, held the other toward Wes.

  Wes shook his head. “I didn’t take you for that sort of drinker.”

  Dennis downed the contents of his glass in two swallows, poured again. Sloshed a little of the liquid over the rim of the glass; it spattered into a constellation on the counter. “Only on days good as this one.” He lifted his eyes to Wes’s; they were sharp and level. “First time I met Scott wasn’t at that career day thing I told you about; it was outside Jameson’s. He was out there smoking a cigarette and some other kids had cornered him, were saying all this shit about how his father took it up the ass, was the biggest bitch in High Side, that these things ran in families. I came this close to punching one of those boys, Wes. A grown man and I’d have hit some punk teenager. Only thing stopped me was Scott grabbed my sleeve.” He shook his head. “Maybe I should’ve done it anyway. Maybe I’d be in jail and he’d be alive.”

  “Dennis . . .”

  “I loved that kid, I really did. I don’t know if you loved him, Wes, but I know you cared. So he fucked up! He already paid with his goddamned life. You’re really gonna let some misguided sense of justice and righteousness and victimhood keep you from paying your respects?”

  Wes held Dennis’s gaze. “I wouldn’t put it that way myself. But yeah,” he said, “I am.”

  Silence. That fucking clock.

  Dennis balanced his glass between thumb and forefinger, set the heels of both hands on the edge of the counter on either side of his body. He looked at the floor for a while, cleared his throat once. Glanced up twice before he spoke. “Wes,” he said, and his voice carried more gravel than usual, “I’m going to say this real calm. I’m not yelling, I’m not swearing, I’m not storming around. That’s because I want you to hear what I’m saying.” He sighed deeply, seemed to draw himself straighter as he steeled himself for the words. He looked straight into Wes’s eyes, and he said, “I need you out of my house. Tonight. Pack your stuff, get in your truck and get the hell out. I don’t care where you go. I don’t want to know. And I don’t want to see you again.”

  Wes stared at the floor. Maybe there was still a way to salvage this. Maybe there were still words that could fix it. Actions. But how far back would be far enough? How much did he need to undo? The last few minutes? The last few days? Weeks? Years? Might there be a way to reverse all the worst things in his life, all the wrong decisions, all the misfortunes? Were there opportunities he’d missed, chances to save Scott, Dennis, Claire, Lane, his mother, his father, himself? Surely there was a way. Why wasn’t there a way?

  “Dennis, can’t we—”

  He hurled the glass so quickly Wes hardly saw it coming. It shattered against the brick beside his head, and Wes felt bits of glass rain into his hair, felt a single drop of liquid—liquor, he thought, not blood—slide down the back of his neck. When he raised his head again, he saw that Dennis looked more shocked than Wes felt. His hands trembled slightly, and he crossed his arms and pressed them hard against his chest. He cleared his throat, but when he spoke his voice was husky, and steadier than Wes would have guessed it would be. “You can see,” he said, “I need you gone.”

  PART IV

  DIVIDE

  Claire returns to B
lack River in the spring, half a year after she and Wesley left. She goes on a Sunday, and before she leaves, Wesley lifts the hood of the truck and checks and rechecks the oil and the brake fluid and the wiper solution, until she says, You’re going to be late for church if you don’t quit.

  He replaces the oil dipstick one last time, then lets the hood down, pressing on it with the heels of his hands to make sure the latch has caught. You drive real careful, now, he tells her.

  I will.

  And give me a call when you get there.

  I will, Wesley.

  And you tell Dennis I said . . . He steps away from the truck, from her. Half turns in the driveway and looks toward the horizon, so she sees his profile. Sees the way he lets his head drop a little before he speaks again. You just tell him I said whatever you think he ought to hear.

  It is a good day to travel, sunny until she hits the first pass, and even the clouds over the mountains withhold their rain. Claire finds she has to concentrate on driving more than she used to—these days she gets behind the wheel only to go to the market, or when Wesley’s hands trouble him more than usual—but it relaxes her anyway, especially once she has left the city and the largest towns behind.