by Gwen Florio
“You, Mommy. When you’re mad. Like when you were mad at the bad truck.” Lola glanced in the rearview mirror. Margaret’s face went from sly to somber at the memory of the truck. Lola had never discussed it with her after that night. She assigned herself another demerit, and belatedly tried to remedy the situation.
“Do you still think about the truck?”
“Sometimes.” Margaret’s tone was matter-of-fact. “Do you know what I’m thinking now?”
“No idea.”
“That I’m hungry.”
Lola far preferred hunger to lingering trauma, the former being far more easily remedied. But Thirty was well behind them, and the next town was nearly forty-five minutes away. Her own stomach growled. A sign flashed past, indicating one of the secondary reservation roads. Lola checked her map. Just as she’d thought, the road angled across the reservation, a shortcut of sorts to the two-lane highway that would take them to the Tetons. The gravel surface would make for a longer trip, but the road also passed by the reservation’s convenience store. Lola flicked her turn signal and took it. “Lunch, coming right up,” she promised Margaret.
When they got to the store, though, she realized lunch was more easily said than done. “Don’t even think about it,” she told Margaret as the girl lingered in front of the refrigerated cases of sugary pop. Lola walked the aisles, rejecting one thing after another. The plastic-wrapped sandwiches made of squishy white bread and processed meat, their stamped dates past due. The fried chicken slowly fossilizing beneath orange heat lights. The shelves of off-brand candy and chips. Yogurt—full fat, and loaded with fruit swimming in corn syrup—actually rated a moment’s consideration. But the store was out of plastic spoons. She finally settled on a couple of blackened bananas and apples fast going mushy, pointedly ignoring Margaret’s scowl and handing the clerk a twenty.
“Do you mind taking your change in ones?” the clerk asked. She showed Lola the change drawer, the trays for larger bills empty. The dollar bills were limp with use, as though their previous owners had fondled them one last time before reluctantly handing them over.
“I feel guilty taking them,” Lola blurted. Then worried she’d given offense by implying she could spare them.
The young woman pointed with her lips to a jar on the counter. “You could put some in there. Every little bit helps.”
The jar bore a handful of change and a few bills. A Xeroxed photo and hand-printed notice sought donations for Patrick Sounding Sides.
Lola retrieved a dollar from her wallet. “Who’s that?”
The clerk slammed the drawer shut. The sound echoed in the empty store. “The guy got beat up by those soldiers. He’s home now, but he still needs round-the-clock care. We’re trying to help out his family.”
Time stopped. The pain that had hovered above Lola, stubborn as a vulture over a dying animal, flew away even as her story coasted in for a landing, bright with renewed promise. Lola ducked to hide her inappropriate smile and fumbled with her wallet, extracting every bill. She dropped them into the jar, making sure the clerk saw. “Any chance,” she said, “you know how to get in touch with his family?”
By the time she turned off the gravel road onto the two-track that led to Patrick Sounding Sides’s home, Margaret was in full revolt. Her usual MO when upset was to sulk, arms folded, lower lip outthrust, her scowling silence both epic and eloquent. Bub squeezed himself into the safe place beneath the sofa when Margaret was in one of her moods. Charlie, the very definition of calm and competence, wrung his hands and pleaded with her. Lola, after lecturing Charlie on the importance of ignoring such manipulative behavior, usually lost her temper and yelled. On this day, however, she would have preferred the sulk.
Because Margaret, never one for a tantrum, decided to give it a try. She threw back her head and screamed to the heavens. Her sneakered feet beat a drum solo on the back of Lola’s seat. She flailed about with her fists, catching Bub on the ear. He yelped and dove for the floor, and did his level best to insert himself into the space beneath the passenger seat, managing only to hide his nose and front paws. Occasionally, words emerged from the din.
“Home!” “Jemalina!” “Daddy!” “Now!”
Lola caught her drift. In fact, with the exception of Jemalina, she shared Margaret’s sentiments. Her hands shook on the wheel. She wished Charlie were there to deal with Margaret’s tantrum. Maybe he’d know what to do. Even if he didn’t, she’d be able to take comfort in their shared helplessness. Guilt sat like a boulder in her stomach. She’d turned what could have been a perfectly fine vacation into nothing but misery for Margaret, who until now had spent uncomplaining days playing quietly in the heat as her mother elicited tales of horror and death, punctuated by an unforgiveable amount of curses, from a series of strangers. Lola had been such an unsatisfactory companion that a psychotic chicken apparently was preferable. The truck passed a side road. “Dammit,” she muttered. Although, she could have shouted without being heard. “I think that was our turn.” She hit the brakes. Then she took a good look around. Nobody else was on the road. No houses nearby. Not even a wayward deer. No one to hear the sounds of a child screaming bloody murder. She pulled to the shoulder and turned off the ignition and stared straight ahead.
Margaret gasped for air. There was a brief, blessed moment of
silence. The cessation of motion seemed to have caught Margaret
unaware. Lola spoke quickly, quietly, without turning. “Go ahead,” she said. “Take all the time you like. We’ll just sit here until you’re done.”
Margaret obliged. Lola hadn’t thought it possible for her to scream louder. She’d been wrong. She counted silently. When I get to one hundred, she told herself, I’ll say something. Or do something. She had no idea what. At twenty-five, Margaret gulped another breath and Lola’s hopes soared. At twenty-six, the scream re-emerged, stronger than ever. At fifty, she was still going strong. Lola put her hand on the passenger seat. It vibrated with Bub’s trembling. Margaret breathed again at seventy-five. Lola closed her eyes and prayed. She’d grown up Catholic, but couldn’t remember the patron saint of parents. St. Joseph, maybe? He’d married Mary, knowing she was pregnant with what he could only have assumed was another man’s child. Would he have been so quick to marry her if he’d witnessed a temper tantrum the likes of which Margaret was throwing? Lola’s prayer took her to ninety-eight. When Margaret … just … stopped.
The wind reasserted itself, howling hot past the open window as if to remind Margaret that, whatever it lacked in volume, it more than made up for in staying power. Bub crawled out from under the seat, staying as far as possible from Margaret, plastering his body against the dashboard, ears flat against his head as if to emphasize the pain of the recent aural assault. Lola said nothing at all. She started the engine and took the turn that would lead them to Patrick Sounding Sides’s house.
Lola parked next to a truck on blocks, one of several in the yard. The Sounding Sides were like many reservation families in their reluctance to discard anything that might someday prove useful. The disabled trucks had been stripped of tires and bumpers and even their bench seats, one of which sat against the side of the house, its innards erupting through gashes in the vinyl. Still, its spot in the shade made it an inviting prospect, and Lola imagined family members taking their ease there in evening’s cool, maybe sharing a cigarette and an illicit beer, watching the sun set the sky afire before it sank behind the Winds. She unbuckled Margaret from her booster seat. Margaret, usually a wriggling eel of a child, lay limp in her arms, flushed and spent from her outburst. Bub, after taking care of his business, stayed so close his nose bumped Lola’s ankles, a cold wet shock every few seconds.
Lola stood some distance from the front door, in clear view should anyone choose to move aside the towels that blocked the living room window. Indian people didn’t knock. The home’s occupants would have heard her truck’s approach, the slam of its
door. Lola waited. A towel twitched. The door opened. Bub whined. A woman clung to the doorjamb as though fearful that if she let go, she’d slide to the floor, collapsing into exhaustion so complete that Margaret could pitch another tantrum without notice. Margaret’s fury had fled, though. “Oh, Mommy,” she whispered.
Lola let go of Margaret’s hand and hurried to the woman, taking her elbow. “I think you need to sit down,” she said. The woman leaned heavily on Lola. Patrick Sounding Sides’s mother, probably.
“You’re the whitelady from the store. Mona called. Said someone was coming.” Her voice came out in a rasp. Her hair hung rough and matted, as though she arose from too-short bouts of sleep without brushing it. The house was dark and ferociously hot. It smelled of rubbing alcohol and urine and unwashed humans, a combination Lola associated with third-world hospitals. She made out a love seat covered by a star quilt and, across the room, a single bed with a kitchen chair beside it. Another star quilt covered the unmoving form in the bed. Lola led the woman to the love seat and eased her onto it. Bub draped himself across the woman’s feet. Margaret clambered up beside her and stroked the back of her hand, her gaze fixed on the woman’s face. Lola’s heart swelled with love and pride and tenderness. “Are you sick?” asked Margaret.
The woman looked at her with uncomprehending eyes.
“I think she’s just worn out,” Lola said. “You stay here with her.” Lola went into the kitchen and found a glass and filled it with tap water, hoping that the water on the Wind River Reservation was safer than that on some of Montana’s reservations, where contamination from all manner of causes—usually at the hands of outsiders—had forced some people to drink bottled water for years. A washcloth lay on the counter. Lola lifted it to her face and sniffed. It was clean. She ran cold water over it, wrung it out, and brought it and the water glass to the woman in the chair.
“I’m going to put a cold cloth on your head,” she said. The woman nodded. Lola lay the cloth on her forehead and held the glass to her lips. She sipped, and turned her head aside and closed her eyes.
“I thought someone was coming to help you.” Lola tried to keep the anger from her voice. The man in the bed likely needed round-the-clock home health care. Yet he’d been returned to a remote reservation and left to the ministrations of well-meaning but untrained amateurs. But the woman disabused her of that notion.
“We got help. All kinds of help. Both my sisters are nurses. They’ve been here every minute they’re not at their jobs.”
“Then why—?” Lola didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Why was the woman such a wreck? Was she a druggie, filching her son’s medications? A loathsome scenario, but hardly unique. But no, if her sisters were nurses, they’d have been alert to that particular problem, and would have taken steps to fend it off.
The woman’s whisper drifted toward her. “Can’t sleep. Not when he was in the hospital, not since he’s come home. Afraid to close my eyes. Afraid—” As though pulled by her own words, the woman put a hand on the love seat’s arm, levered herself upward and tottered toward the chair by the bed. Lola and Margaret and Bub followed close. The woman put her ear to the mouth of the man in the bed. Relief bathed her face. Lola understood then. The woman was afraid that if she relaxed her vigilance long enough to get the sleep she so badly needed, her son would relax his tenuous hold on life, let it slide from his fingers and fly out the window before his mother could rise and snatch it back.
The man stirred. “Ma. You look like hell.”
Lola stepped back at the surprising strength in his voice. It seemed to flow directly into his mother’s body. The woman straightened and ran a hand through her hair. She managed a smile. “Maybe I should bring you a mirror. You’re no movie star yourself.”
His head moved slowly from side to side. “Maybe not. Who’s this?”
Lola took a breath. She had no idea how long he’d be lucid. Or when his, or his mother’s, patience would wear thin. And whether they, like everyone else, would show her the door the minute she stated her mission. But it had to be done.
“I’m Lola Wicks. This is my little girl, Margaret. I’m a newspaper reporter. I’m here to write about all the people from Thirty who went over to Afghanistan. Mostly, I’m writing about Mike St. Clair and how his death affected everybody else.”
A laugh rattled in Patrick’s chest. It turned into a wracking cough. His mother slipped a hand beneath his shoulders and strained to raise his torso. Lola hurried to the other side of the bed to help her. Patrick’s body, like his voice, was unexpectedly robust. Lola guessed he’d inflicted some damage on T-Squared until the two-against-one odds had finally triumphed. Patrick caught his breath and nodded. Lola and his mother eased him back onto the pillow.
“Why write about how it affected everybody else? Looks like it affected Mike most of all.”
“Yes. But nobody will talk to me about that on the record. They don’t want the story to come out because of the shame to his grandfather.”
Patrick pushed himself up unaided, propelled, it seemed, by fury. “Shame?” he shouted.
His mother put a thin hand to his shoulder to push him back. “No, Patrick, no,” she whimpered.
He spoke past her. “The only shame is on those bastards for how they treated Mike.”
TWENTY-SIX
Mrs. Sounding Sides moved so close that Lola was forced to step back, and then again, the woman herding her toward the door as efficiently as Bub maneuvered Margaret away from any piece of food he deemed within his reach. “I’m sorry. You seem like a nice lady. But you should go. He’s upset.”
Patrick’s voice snubbed both women up short. “Ma. No. I want to talk to her.”
Lola held her breath. By rights, his permission was all she needed. But she’d spent too many years amid the Blackfeet to easily disregard his mother’s opinion. And, as a practical matter, given that she and Patrick couldn’t slip outside for a private chat, the interview would go more smoothly if his mother agreed.
Mrs. Sounding Sides took her son’s hand. He covered it with his other hand, pain creasing his face at the effort. “It’s okay. I want to do this.”
Lola allowed herself a breath. “I won’t take long. I promise. You can sit here and listen if you like. But I want you to do one thing for me, as long as it’s all right with both of you.” Now she needed the son’s permission to help his mother. “When I’m done—or even while I’m talking with him, if you like—I want you to lie down on that love seat. You can go to sleep now or wait until I’m done talking with him. I’ll sit right beside him until your sisters or somebody else comes. I won’t go to sleep and I won’t ask him any more questions after I’m done. I’ll just sit with him. And Margaret will sit with you. You have got to get some sleep or you won’t be any good to your son.”
Even as she spoke, Lola wondered at her own words. Despite the surprise that had turned out to be Margaret, she had never thought of herself as anyone’s caretaker. But ever since she’d arrived in Wyoming, she seemed to be helping people care for themselves against their will.
The woman looked to her son. “Go ahead, Ma. You can lie down right now. If she asks me anything I don’t like, I just won’t answer.”
Mrs. Sounding Sides let Margaret lead her to the love seat. “I’ll sit by you like Mommy sits by your little boy,” Margaret said. Lola thought the woman might cry. Instead she toppled sideways onto the love seat, eyes closed and mouth slack before her head hit the arm. Margaret fit herself into the curve of the woman’s torso and stroked her head and crooned to her, much as she did to Bub at their mutual bedtime. Lola felt a cracking sensation in her heart as it expanded to accommodate another surge of the love and guilt her child provoked.
“Well?” Patrick waited. He offered a polite smile, mostly gums, the upper teeth along one side of his mouth knocked out. His nose skewed to one side. His left eye drooped. Broken occipital bone, Lola t
hought. His hands lay atop the quilt, backs still bruised, fingers fat and mottled as salamis. They’d stomped his hands, then, once they’d gotten him down. His right arm was in a cast past the elbow. Lola imagined those same booted feet coming down on the vulnerable bones of the forearm, the fragile radius snapping beneath a single blow, the ulna demanding concentrated effort. She thought back to the bow-tied bartender, so narrow of shoulder and hip, no bulk to leverage one drink-strengthened man away from Patrick, let alone two.
Lola clicked the recording app on her phone, held her pen above her notebook, and posed to Patrick the same question she’d asked everyone else:
“What happened over there?”
“All I know is from Mike’s texts,” Patrick began. He ran his tongue over cracked lips. Lola put down her notebook and held the glass of water to his mouth. A few drops dribbled through the scant stubble on his chin. Lola found the washcloth she’d gotten for his mother and used it to blot them away. “I saved them all. They’re on my phone. There.” He lifted the hand in the cast and waved it toward a nightstand on the other side of the bed. Lola reached across him and picked it up.
“Go ahead,” he said. “You can look.”
She hit the text icon and started scrolling backward. Down, down and down. In the six months he’d been in Afghanistan, Mike St. Clair had sent his friend hundreds of texts. Lola finally reached the beginning. The first few were lighthearted. “Yo, bro check out this shit. We gettin’ it done.” A photo of Mike and Pal in fatigues and helmets, posing with rifles aimed from the waist, wide smiles on their faces. More like that. Lots more.
“Back from 1st patrol not dead yet.” Mike standing atop a Stryker, fists raised high in triumph.
