Hell's Bottom, Colorado

by Laura Pritchett

  Mom climbs in the driver’s side and I sit in the passenger seat, but still she doesn’t look my way. She hasn’t looked at me since yesterday, which was my thirteenth birthday, which was when Ray told her to get out of her Damn Slump and do something for me. I told her I wanted a picnic. Instead we had what she called Special Wild Meal, which was everything Ray and Billy had shot and stuck in the freezer: a duck, a pheasant, an ugly fish Billy caught up at the dam. There wasn’t even a cake, and the birds had bits of shot and feathers still in them. We ate on the couches, instead of on a blanket spread in a field, and our couches aren’t even really couches; they’re more like huge pillows resting on frames. We got them free because they were sitting by the side of the road, and they smell like cat pee.

  When Billy asked if he could be excused and go outside, I asked too. Mom rolled her eyes at me because I didn’t eat much, but she shrugged and said I could do what I wanted on my birthday as long as I brought her a beer, which I did Without An Argument. On my way back from the kitchen, I heard Ray say something about getting a bit of quiet time, and he was sliding his hand up her leg, and she was smiling, so I knew we’d be outside for a while. But before I went, I said, “Thanks for nothing.” I didn’t bother to wait around to see what look she shot back at me, which I guess is why she won’t look at me now.

  Before Billy climbs in the bed of the truck, he leans in and bonks me on the head. “Hey Cuckaburra,” he says to me. “Happy day after birthday.” Cuckaburra is his name for me today. Yesterday it was Ornery Toad. Each day he gives me another name, the first word that pops into his head when he sees me. Tomorrow it might be Iguana or it might be Wily Monster, who knows, but it will make me smile.

  Mom’s smiling a bit now too, and she’s a better driver than I am, that’s for sure. She lets out the clutch and guides the pickup forward between the rows of hay, smooth as can be. She’s cheered up some, and now she’s singing along with the radio, some country song. Even driving and singing, and she’s still able to watch Ray, who is now throwing the bales up to Billy. In the rearview mirror, she watches him walk toward each bale, watches his old gloves grasp orange baling twine, watches his back arch as he sends the bale spiraling into the air and into the bed of the truck. She sees dust and hay fall back onto his red face as he throws the bale up, sees him move on to the next one, and she lets the truck go just enough to keep up with him.

  “Why he works so hard,” Mom says, keeping an eye on him but leaning over to whisper to me, “is because he wants things so bad. There is no half-wanting about him.”

  There’s nothing to say to that. I watch her hands on the steering wheel. She’s painted her fingernails a burnt orange with white drops of polish on top to make flowers. She’s always trying stuff like that, making herself pretty in ways that make no sense. Already the polish is chipped and the flowers look ugly, like they’re sad to be on fingernails instead of in a field rising up to the sun.

  “I, on the other hand, am a half-wanter,” she says. “Sometimes being that way makes things easier but sometimes harder because you’re pretty much satisfied with anything and sometimes that can lead to trouble. But this wanting part of Ray, I understand. You’ve got it too, Jess. You both want that land so bad it’s choking you up.”

  She’s talking about yesterday, when Ray promised to give me what I want most. Next birthday, he said, we’ll all be living on our own section away from this rented house with its piles of junk, away from where we are, which he says, and I agree, is a white-trash house on somebody else’s land. We’re going to build a house together and settle down and be a family and watch sunsets on the porch. He winked at me and presented me with a certificate for my very own acre, to do with what I want, and he said to start dreaming about the possibilities right away.

  Then he leaned over and kissed my mom and said, “Isn’t that right, Rachel? Do you dream of sunsets too?”

  When he says her name I think of how she told me once, long ago when she was drunk, that she wasn’t quite satisfied with the name Rachel and she wasn’t quite satisfied with the name Mom. She wanted, she said, to be a little bit more than either of them. She said that’s the reason for so many boyfriends. Some of them called her Rachel, and some called her Little Bird or Honey or Sweet Gal. I learned what they called her, and I learned their names too. I learned about different-colored toothbrushes and different preferences for brands of beer. And then I learned about Ray, whom I thought was different because him she actually married. She must have loved him enough to move to this place in the middle of nowhere Colorado, away from the mountains and away from our grandparents. But it is not enough, I see that now. Because yesterday when Ray asked her about sunsets and our some-day house, she said, “Yes, yes, it’s enough to make up a dream,” but the way she said it made us all grow quiet.

  So maybe there will be no house. My mom has a greasy old magnet pinned to the refrigerator that reads, “Mom Is Another Name For Love.” I’m just starting to realize that maybe that’s not always true.

  Yesterday, after Billy and I were excused from the Special Wild Meal, he invited me into his Hideout. That’s Billy for you, I was thinking, giving better names to things than they deserve. His hideout is just a place in last year’s haystack where two bales fell out near the bottom but the rest of the stack stayed up, so there’s a little place to crawl into. The only neat thing about his hideout, I told him, is something he doesn’t even know about. As we climb in, I tell him the story. How last summer I was climbing around and found where the chicken made a nest and laid her eggs, in the same place we were sitting. Remember, I said, how Mom was all mad because she thought the chicken wasn’t laying eggs at all, which is what she’d bought her for? But I learned that chicken was just smart. Instead of getting her egg taken away each morning, she just took off and found someplace new. I told that chicken I was going to follow her example someday, but in the meantime I’d keep her nest a secret. I was hoping there’d be some chicks following her around one day, which would surprise everyone but me, but that’s not what happened. One morning there was just a bunch of feathers near the haystack and the chicken and eggs were gone.

  “So that,” I said to Billy, “is what you get for trying to get away.”

  But Billy was not interested in my story. What he was interested in, he said, was getting a rabbit. I just rolled my eyes at that. Partly because he’d never get one, and partly because Billy doesn’t understand that most people don’t want to eat rabbits, especially ones they shoot, and that I don’t want to, either. He doesn’t seem to understand that we’re poor.

  I was thinking about everyone else at their birthday parties with decorated tables and food without bits of shot, and I was just about to fall asleep when I felt Billy tense up and raise his gun. He was pointing it at a little gray dove. The dirt was ground into a fine dust next to the haystack, and wherever the bird hopped it left perfect prints, each one shaped like three little prongs. It was pecking at the hay scattered on the ground and then hopping and pecking some more.

  “Billy, don’t,” I whispered, and at the same time, the dove looked up, maybe hearing the danger that was coming its way. The crack of the gun went off at the same time the bird lifted its wings to fly. It climbed a little into the air, mostly sideways, and then fell, fluttering, to the ground.

  “Got it!” Billy slipped out of the hideout and grabbed the dove. He turned around to face me and at first he was smiling, but then a sick look came across his face. The dove in his hand was blinking its eye, and one wing stretched out, trying to make flight.

  “Kill it, Billy!” I kept saying it over and over, but he just stood there, looking at the bird twisting in his palm. I ran up to him and grabbed the bird from his hands. I was surprised by how light it was and how warm and soft those feathers were. They were like touching silky dust on a smooth board, and I wish that’s what I could have known about that bird, but what I knew was that I had to kill it, so I twisted the bird’s head until I heard a snap.
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br />   I would like to tell Mom about it now, how I punched Billy until he cried, how I told him that he was no damn hunter if he couldn’t even kill the bird he’d hurt. But also that I didn’t mean it like Ray does. I meant that Billy is Billy and Billy was never meant to be a hunter. How I keep trying to show him that, which is why, as I suddenly realized it myself, I told him that we don’t have to love Ray, and we don’t even have to love Mom.

  What is the name for it, he’d said after punching me back, when it’s not love and not hate? And what about them loving us?

  I said I didn’t know, but that we should go bury that bird. He was cradling the soft gray dove in his open palms, like he was offering it up to someone. I took the bird in one hand and took his hand with my other and led him to the barn. I got the shovel and walked back outside and started to dig, and I said, Let’s bury this bird before we forget who we are.

  I’m trying to figure out how to tell Mom this, to give her a warning that it’s about to go one way or the other. Billy and I are either going to move toward her or away from her, and she better do something soon if she wants us together.

  What I guess is that Ray’s been basically asking her the same thing, because I can see he wants her, too. We all want her in a whole-wanting way, and if we don’t get it, I think we’re all bound to turn away.

  I’m trying to figure out the words to tell her this when I hear a half-scream, half-yelp coming from Ray. I turn my head to see out the window. He’s standing back from a bale, looking at a small snake that has been smashed in with the grass.

  Billy’s laughing from where he’s standing in the bed of the truck, saying check out this damned old snake. Mom and I step out of the truck to get a better view.

  “It’s not a rattler,” Mom says. “Just a cute garter. Surprised you, didn’t it?”

  But Ray’s not listening. He’s still looking at the snake. Half of the snake sticks out, twisting in the air. The other half is caught under baling twine and compacted hay.

  “Cut the twine,” Mom says, throwing Ray the pocketknife that had been resting on the seat between us.

  I’m looking at that crazy snake, wondering how it got caught in the bale like that, so I don’t see Ray until he’s walking in front of the truck toward Mom. What I see is a pace that’s too fast, a face that’s too red. What I hear is something about wasting a bale for a goddamn snake, about her being so smart that she can get it out herself.

  Mom laughs. I hear the surprised snort escape her throat a second before I hear the slap that cracks against her face. Ray’s pulling her away from the truck, pushing her down in the grass. His boot lands on the back of her thigh, and she flies forward from its force, and I hear myself saying “Hey!” in surprise. I’m looking for Billy, but out of the corner of my eye I see Mom’s neck snap when Ray’s palm cracks into her head. I don’t know whether to run to Mom or away from her, so I cover my ears and sink down into the field and curl my back so that my head is touching clumped bundles of grass. A motionless bug is poised in the place where blade turns to root. I keep my eyes on it while I hear Mom screaming “You bastard!” over and over. Then she’s not screaming anymore, and I’m just hearing the noise of his fist hitting her. I cover my face after that, hold my chin against my chest and breathe in the smell of my sweat and bits of hay, and I stay there, stay with that smell, until I hear it get quiet.

  I look up to see Ray dragging Mom toward the snake. She jerks out of his grip as they near, and without even hesitating she reaches out and grabs the snake right below its head with her thumb and forefinger. With her other hand, she pulls on the tight baling twine. It looks like that snake’s going to tear in half as it stretches with her pull. Seems like forever, this snake stretching between the bale and my mother, between green grass and blue sky.

  The snake slides out and hangs from her hand, coiling in the air. Mom walks away from us, holding it away from her. She means to put that snake in the grass and let it go. But before she sets it down, she turns to Ray. “You asshole,” she says. “All fucked up over a goddamn garter snake.”

  It’s then that I notice the blood running down her face, and it’s then that I notice Ray moving toward her again in a way that makes me close my eyes. But right then I hear the sound of Billy’s feet running, and all of us turn to look at him.

  He’s got the rifle from the house and is pointing it at Ray. He slows as he reaches us and keeps his eyes on Ray as he walks toward Mom. She drops the snake, and the blades of grass move as it disappears. Then Mom takes the rifle with the same hand. She puts the butt of it against her shoulder.

  Blood is really streaming now, from her nose to chin, and from her ear to her neck. She’s shaking so bad it looks like she’s about to crack apart.

  “Billy and Jess, get in the truck,” she says.

  Then Ray starts talking. “Fucking bitch,” is what he says first. But then he throws down the pocketknife, which I guess was in his hand all this time, and he starts talking slower. “Rachel, Rachel. I’m sorry.” He says her name over again, soft and quiet, then something about how goddamn hot it is today, words about the heat and the snake.

  Billy is pushing me toward the truck and we climb in and watch Mom walk around Ray, toward the driver’s side. She slides the gun in first, across our legs, then pulls herself in. Her leg touches mine and I want to crawl into that touch, curl myself up, and press against her.

  Only when we’re on the county road does she make a sound. It’s a gasp and then a choking kind of cry, and then Billy and I are crying too. She says our names over and over, says it’s going to be all right. Finally she pulls over on the side of a wheat field and turns off the ignition. I want her to tell me again that it’s okay, to tell me that we’re safe. Instead, she takes the gun from our laps. She steps from the truck and walks a few paces away and then turns around.

  “You going to help me unload this?” She’s asking Billy, who doesn’t answer. He’s looking straight ahead out the windshield. It’s just like something she might do, refusing to take notice at all.

  “I don’t know how to unload it,” she says.

  Still he doesn’t say anything, so she looks away from him, toward the wheat. “I’ll shoot the damn bullets out, then,” she says. She puts the stock against her shoulder, aims to where golden wheat meets blue sky, and turns off the safety. There is a moment of stillness, and then the shots ring out past all of us, echoing into all that nothing.

  We are the children my mom did not want, from a man she did not want to marry. She kept us but left him. Then she got a boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend, and then Ray. I’m looking in the direction that the bullets just flew and thinking that there must be names for different kinds of love but that true love must be the whole-wanting sort, and I’m guessing I do love her after all.

  Mom climbs back into the truck and we sit, silent, staring out at the sky until it darkens into a smooth steel blue. When she starts the truck up, I feel sick. I don’t feel like talking but I have to know, so I whisper, “Can you tell me where we’re going?”

  She lets out the clutch and guides the pickup onto the road. “Home,” she says. At first I think she means to Ray. But instead of driving away from the mountains, she’s driving toward them. Then I realize she means her home, the ranch where she grew up. Maybe she believes, like I do, that there’s only a small amount of time when we can start again each day, new, and that such a thing is still possible if we hurry and move on together underneath this dimming sky.

  THE RECORD KEEPER

  MY MOTHER LEANS AGAINST the corral fence, explaining to my cousin Jess about prolapses and how the best thing to do is to shove the uterus back in and sew the cow up with thick string and give her a shot of penicillin. “Once the birth canal is back inside the cow,” she says, “you use a big hook needle and make purse-string stitches. So, do you want me to teach you to sew?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jess says.

  My brother, Jack, tries to make Jess cringe by
offering details. “The uterus is heavy and slick and it takes two people, one to hold it up, and the other to punch it back inside,” he says. “It slimes you all over.”

  But Jess doesn’t scrunch her face, as I did when I was her age. Instead, she nods in delight, and says that although she would never wish that on any mama cow, if it’s going to happen anyway, she’d like to be there to see it.

  Dad and Jack climb over the fence into the pen crowded with cattle and start arguing about which bull’s semen to use next year. Jack scratches a yearling heifer on the hump between her ears, and when the animal raises her head to sniff his shirt, she leaves a smudge of mucus on his sleeve. Jack eyes the snot in an offhand way and then an ornery look floods his face. He leans over during the height of the argument and wipes the slime on Dad’s cheek. Dad scowls and rubs it back onto Jack. He slugs Jack softly in the belly, and then Jack punches Dad, and then they box each other, shuffling around in the manure like they’re in a ring, quick jabs and ducks to the side. The cows press against the railing, watching the circling boxers with sleepy interest, flicking their tails against the flies.

  “I’ve about had it with you hooligans,” Jess sings out, mimicking my father. “I’m growing impatient with your childishness.” Strands of blond hair lit by the sun shoot up from yesterday’s braids. She’s wearing blue shorts and red cowboy boots and there’s two slices of leg in between.