Postcards

by Annie Proulx

  36

  Shotguns

  ‘THEY’VE TURNED IT back on itself, now,’ said Doffin. ‘It’s the wind. The wind is as shifty as a greased pig.’ The dog would not let Loyal out of her sight. She lay under the table pressing against his foot. After supper Doffin, with the crooked walk of an old horseman, led them into the living room to watch the fire on television. Loyal saw how small the burning was from the air, a few thousand acres on the immense plains. The telephone wires dipped across the landscape. On the ground it had been like the world was on fire, a streaming fire that could ride the wind to Canada or Mexico. The announcer said sixteen farms were gone. One of the corn farmers, a year’s income gone in an hour, showed up at the hospital with a shotgun, calling for the burned McDonald’s manager. There was a murky shot of the handcuffed farmer hunching into the sheriffs car.

  Doffin poured trembling drinks for Loyal and himself. The desiccated face, burned black-red, the eyes glimmering.

  ‘You’re welcome to stay here Mr. Blood until you get back on your feet again.’ The squat glass in the circle of the old man’s hand. ‘Shotguns. I could tell you about shotguns around here until the clock’s hands fell off’ The big couch was framed in peeled cedar logs, cushions covered in cowhide. The lampshade made a light the color of a campfire when the stories begin. Mrs. Doffin sat apart, thin legs coming out of the skirt, crossed at the ankle like a pirate’s flag of bones, hands calm after the ritual of pouring coffee, nodding at whatever was said.

  Loyal nodded too. There was still the land. He could sell the acreage and take off. Get a new truck. Maybe one of those VW vans, fix it up inside, be like a little house on wheels. Hell, he could go anywhere. Alaska. California.

  ‘I could tell you about shotguns, make it sound bad, describe you the grief they’ve caused, but I come to see it’s more like a habit kind of a thing you know, like it’s just a pretty good way to clean up a life that’s gone dirty. They used to call it temporary derangement, but I always thought the act showed considerable lucidity considering the circumstances. Not all the time, of course, but most of the time. My wife’s family picked that way quite a few times.’ Mrs. Doffin nodded. Her bony hands lay idle on the blue tapestry arms of the chair.

  ‘Her father. Grandfather. One of her uncles. And I can think of others. All farmers, or at least most of them.’

  ‘That’s right.’ The index finger of the right hand tapped a little. ‘I was the one to find my father. I was only seventeen years old. The shock made me blind for a week my mother said. I don’t remember it.’

  ‘Your rancher or farmer now, Mr. Blood, will almost always choose a shotgun. They’ll get a forked stick, you see, that lets them reach the trigger. They don’t go in around here for that business with the big toe. Don’t like to take their boots off. Die with your boots on, you know. They’ll set the muzzle up to the forehead. That’s where you aim when you kill a cow. Weakest part of the head. See, they know, just around these parts I could name you a dozen. Alvin Compass, good-looking young fellow used to drive over to Wolfwing. He was courting some girl over there, we never did know who it was. He was a nice kid, come from a decent ranch family. His father has a nice ranch in the Whitewater valley. Many a time I’ve stopped and watched that herd. I watched one of his bulls in the spring grass. Paw the ground, red dirt spraying up under his foot, then get down and grind his shoulder like he had a bad one down.

  ‘Alvin’d drive more than fifty mile to see that girl. One time he was going pretty fast and clipped a car coming through an intersection. Sent them into the ditch. The car rolled over on its side. Alvin, he stopped and ran over to the car. Looked inside saw five or six people, some of them kids, nobody moving, saw blood all over the driver’s face. He went back to his truck, took his shotgun out of the rack and blew his brains out. Right there on the side of the road. The thing was that the people in the other car weren’t dead. They weren’t even hurt except the driver who got knocked unconscious and had a little cut on his forehead. You know how head cuts bleed. He come to after a few minutes. He was the one found Alvin. Don’t that make you sick?

  ‘C. C. Pope was another one. Lived way out in a big house with his sisters Dorothy and Brittania. None of them ever got married. Strange bunch, I tell you. They had flukey luck about four, five years in a row. Rain all around them, but not on their fields, or flood them out and leave the rest refreshed, or a tornado would light on the farm a week before harvest and tear up everything or all the machinery would break down at once and they’d find out the parts they needed to fix them up were all discontinued. Obsolete. You’d see sun dogs in their sky and nowhere else. Indians wouldn’t come on the place. Called old C. C. “Backward Speaking.” Who knew what that meant. He talked as good as you or me.

  ‘Then old C. C. got lamed up with a pulled shoulder and the doctor told him to get it massaged two, three times a week. Doctor gives him the name of the wife of Earl Doffin, no relation of mine that I know of, she was good at massages and reasonable enough, so he went over there and scrapes his foot for fifteen minutes before he gets up enough courage to ask her if she’d give him a massage. “Ya, ya, I do it.” She was a Swede. He’d go over there every week for his massage. I guess it was just the shoulder, but who knows? Poor old bugger, seventy-four years old, didn’t know any women except the two old prune sisters, he fell in love with Earl Doffin’s wife. Big fat woman, a grandmother six times, and about as romantic as a cow flop. Course he knew it was hopeless. He never said a word to her. Took his shotgun into his bedroom and shot himself while he looked in the mirror. Afterwards they found his bureau drawer just crammed with love letters he never sent her.

  ‘Charles V. Sunday. He was a taxidermist. My goodness, he’d do a big cat that looked so real you’d go cold looking at it, isn’t that right, Molly?’

  The dog slept, her head on Loyal’s foot. The weight was giving his foot pins and needles. He tried to inch it out from under her jaw but the slightest movement and she groveled closer. She’d have to get over that.

  ‘He could stuff anything, tan deer or elk hide so nice it was like butter. He wrote away when he was a boy for one of those mail correspondence courses, Learn Taxidermy in Your Spare Time, but my stars he did well at it. He did mounting for some of the big museums, worked two years on a pack of coyotes they got in New Paltz, New York at the Municipal Museum they got there. They ran a magazine article of that exhibit that we saw somewhere.’

  ‘Western World,’ said Molly Doffin. ‘It’s in one of the boxes up over the tack room. Plus there was one of the local papers did a big write-up. Pictures and everything.’

  ‘Show it to you tomorrow. Well there he is, Mr. Sunday, making a good living, esteemed for his skill, articles in the magazines and papers about him and all, nice family with a couple of kids, and he shoots himself. Right at the end of the winter. Finished up all his work, tacked newspapers on the ceiling, spread more paper out on the floor to spare whoever had to clean up, and blam! But they never knew why he did it. Affairs was in good order. He didn’t give any sign and he didn’t leave a note. After all that trouble of putting up the newspaper on the ceiling it was sort of ironic that all the mess, the brains and gore and blood, ended up on a pile of dominos on the table behind him. He’d been playing dominos with his youngest son about an hour before he shot himself. That was a good many years ago, but what’s even stranger is that that son who’d been playing dominos with him shot himself on his eighteenth birthday. This was just two years ago. I don’t recollect where he did it, do you Molly?’

  ‘Way out in the field.’

  ‘That’s right. It comes back to me now. The funny thing was he used an eight-gauge gun. His father had left his collection, you see, and this was in it.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Loyal. ‘There couldn’t have been much left of him.’

  ‘That’s right. Head was completely blowed away. But at least they know why he did it. He left a three-hundred-twelve-page suicide note behind. Started it seven months
before he did the dirty deed. He’d been writing on it for months. He didn’t think he had any kind of future – said he was homely, girls laughed at him, he had bad habits, guess we know what that means, he was lazy, poor memory, didn’t do well in school and suffered a variety of allergies, one leg shorter than the other and so forth. Every ill known to man.’

  ‘I never thought he was bad-looking,’ said Mrs. Doffin. ‘He seemed perfectly normal every time I saw him. But you never can tell.’

  ‘And there’s a whole stew of them, lost crops, couldn’t keep up their mortgages, financial problems. Of course we’ve had our troubles here, too, but somehow we always came out without having to resort to the pipe. Isn’t that right. Mother?’

  ‘So far,’ said Mrs. Doffin and laughed.

  ‘So, Mr. Blood, you’ve had serious losses today, your bean crop and your leghorns and your house and outbuildings, but I hope you can still look on the bright side. You were spared and your truck and dog was too. I hope you’re not thinking about taking the pipe like those we’ve been talking about. There’s still a lot to live for.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Loyal. ‘The idea never crossed my mind. I been knocked lower than this in my life and never considered it. I wouldn’t blow my head off with a shotgun if you paid me.’ But it seemed his life was like a weak chain, the links breaking one by one.

  ‘Ha-ha. You know, if you want some kind of a job while you think about the next step, why we can manage to give you something here. There’s always work on a dude ranch, even a small one like ours. Yes, and we’ve had two of those shotgun incidents right here, isn’t that right, Mother?’

  ‘Two? There was only Miss Bridal and I still believe that was an accident.’

  ‘What about Parger? You haven’t forgotten him.’

  ‘I have not forgotten him, but it was not a shotgun and it may have been murder. That deer rifle with a string that pulled the trigger when he opened the door. I will always believe it was a killing, and I hate to think of the motive. Mr. Blood, we had some unsavory fellows if you take my meaning out in the bunkhouse at that time and one of them, a friend of this Parger, was as jealous as a woman. The sheriff talked to him for hours and they never arrested him, but I always thought there was more to it than meets the eye. He left before we asked him to go on his way. Probably still out there, roaming around.’

  The dog had wormed her way in between Loyal’s right heel and the couch, twining through his legs and over one foot like a living rope.

  ‘Your dog is a desperate lover, Mr. Blood.’

  ‘Hmm,’ agreed Mrs. Doffin, as though to affirm that a mention of love balanced the accounts of strewed brains.

  37

  The Indian’s Book

  HE’D TRIED TO WRITE down the thing that happened in Griddle’s bar in the Indian’s book. But it melted into nothing under the pen.

  He’d sat at a table making scallops with the wet circles of his beer bottle, half-listening to the argument going on at the end of the bar. Marta, a husky woman with a tower of lacquered hair was arguing with a man. She was dressed like an Icecapades cowgirl, suede vest studded with nailheads, buckskin miniskirt showing linebacker legs with hairy collars up high where the razor had stopped. The man slouched over his beer, oil-limp clothes giving of a greasy vapor.

  ‘So it don’t run no better, that’s what the problem is. You gotta fix it. I took care of you, but far’s I can see you didn’t do nothin’ with my Chevy except maybe set on the front seat. Or maybe just lean on the hood. Did you do anything to it? That’s right, don’t answer, because I know you didn’t.’

  The man scratched at his chest and half-turned away from her. She picked up her chair and moved it to the other side of the table so she was facing him again. Her voice rose.

  ‘You think I just got to take it, huh? Ain’t that what you think? I can’t go to the cops about it, can’t complain to nobody? Well, you are wrong. You have tangled with the wrong girl.’

  The man gave an exaggerated sigh and half-winked at Loyal. He signaled Mrs. Criddle for another.

  ‘You want another beer walk over here and get it,’ said Mrs. Criddle through her white lips, wiping the bar. Her hard eyes accepted nothing until it was part of the past. She made no effort to draw a beer. The man twirled his empty glass on the scarred table.

  ‘Didn’t you hear the lady? She asked you to go over to the bar and get your beer,’ Marta’s voice, sweet with a gagging edge. She got up. ‘I bet you think I ought to go get your beer, don’t you? Yessir, you are just a man that likes to be waited on, hand and foot, ain’t you, you cross-eyed, double-dealin’, hang-nailed no-good TWERP!’ On the last word she yanked his chair out from under him. The man sprawled back from the table and when he yanked at her leg, she stood fast and kicked him in the head and kept on kicking.

  ‘How you like them dance steps, you like that you greasy old monkey? You want more?’ The voice sneered like a comb dragged across the edge of a table. Every time the man tried to get up she kicked him with her scuffed boots, the rhinestones in a wave design around the upper rims.

  ‘Hey, quit that!’ shouted Mrs. Criddle, coming around the corner of the bar. Criddle came out of the back room, wiping his vinegared hands on a towel. The man scuttled under the table of a booth where Marta could not swing her foot. She tossed her head like a bull. The tower of hair swayed.

  ‘Gimme a broom! Stick, baseball bat, something.’ Her eyes rolled over the room, skidded across Loyal to Criddles. They came back to Loyal again.

  ‘What are you starin’ at, you duty turkey? Men! Look at you, you dirty turkey, settin’ there like you are at a show. Well, how you like to be in the show?’ She picked up the man’s empty beer glass and hurled it at Loyal. It struck him on the shoulder, bounced onto the table and broke. She rushed across the room, knocking his chair over, carrying both of them with it. Her knees ground into the floor, stiff points of hair leapt up like flares from the surface of the sun and she whacked at him.

  In the moment of falling he wanted to chop her throat, split the humped black hair to the brain. He came up from the floor like a hammer. He thought he would have killed her except for Criddle and Ben Rainwater, finally, coming in, felt hat tilted over his eyes. The three men staggered around in a surging dance. Mrs. Criddle shoved Marta out through the kitchen and into the alley.

  ‘I don’t care if you don’t got your coat, you go on home if you got one.’

  And through the rage Loyal tasted an evil satisfaction that adrenaline had stalled his fit. Although no secret was unfolded. And wrote that night at the top of the page in the Indian’s book, Only one way, then scored the words out until the pen tore the paper, shut those thoughts down. Who knew how many ways there were to love? Those who could not find any way knew the difficulties.

  38

  Looks Like Rain

  JEWELL WOKE UP with the feeling she had to make haste. There were things to be done, set aright. She drank her cup of tea standing up, looking out at the dark morning. Her hands rattled the cup. Unsteady on her pins, too, she thought, but felt restless. Must be a weather change coming in.

  She washed the cup and saucer and ate a few slices of apple. No appetite these days. Stout since Dub was born, her flesh had fallen away in the past year. Her reflection startled her – old Grandma Sevins, beaky nose and wrinkles, peering at her. She was seventy-two and looked it, but felt like a young woman except for the shakes.

  It was too bad, she thought. She’d missed the leaves turning color again. It had been at its height in October when the new car’s brakes were being replaced, and then the whole idea had slipped her mind while Indian summer skidded past. She’d always intended to go up in the mountains over in New Hampshire at leaf time when she got done at the cannery. They said it was a treat, the colors and the views. She longed to drive up Mount Washington, up the toll road. And then, when she had time on her hands, she’d forgotten about it. She thought the Beetle would make it; they said the road was hard on cars and not a
few had to turn back. The ones that boded over. But at the summit you could see to the end of the world, could buy a sticker for your car bumper that said THIS CAR CLIMBED MT. WASHINGTON. Silly thing to want, a bumper sticker, but she did want it. Mount Washington. Now there was something for an old girl to do!

  Ray had persuaded her to trade in Mink’s ancient pre-War heap for a 1966 VW Beetle. ‘It’s only got twenty-two thousand miles on it. It’ll last as long as the old Ford did, it’ll get good mileage and you can take it places most cars won’t go. Rudy’s got one in pretty good shape. The color’s kind of funny but he says you can have it at a good price.’

  ‘I don’t care about the color!’ she said. Then, ‘What color is it?’

  ‘It’s orange, Jewell. With lime-green upholstery. It was a custom order but the people couldn’t keep up the payments. It runs very good and it’s got a good heater. No body rot at all. Rudy says he’ll replace the brakes for free if you’re interested in the car. I think he’s having trouble selling it because of the color and that’s a fact.’

  She liked the little car once she got past the way it looked. The vehicle’s humped shape and eagerness seemed familiar; it reminded her of Mernelle’s old dog.

  She straightened up the trailer, ran the vacuum cleaner over the braided rug, spread a clean tablecloth and put fresh shelf paper in the kitchen cupboards. That was a little job. In the old days she would have stuffed the dirty paper in the stove and burned it. The electric stove was clean but it couldn’t dry socks, burn paper, raise bread or provide comfort. Cost money to run it. They called it progress.

  By nine there was nothing to do but knit. She was restless. The wool caught on her rough fingers. The trailer cramped in. She felt like a good drive, wanted to get out on the road and see something. The trailer was cozy enough, but it cramped her up. The truth was, she missed working at the cannery.