by S. M. Hulse
“There were four people in my graduating class, and the Durnam twins were dumber than a box of rocks.” I pick a sesame seed off the bun of my half-eaten burger. Hawkins’s comments seem a little out of the blue, but I’ve thought about this a few times myself since learning we were going to lose the house. “I suppose I might have gone if Mom had still been around.”
“You stayed because Samuel was here.” Hawkins doesn’t say it like a question, so I don’t answer, but he’s wrong. Samuel was the one who’d intended to leave. He stayed in Prospect with me instead of joining the military with Kev, accepting the baseball scholarship, becoming a veterinarian. He stayed to drive me to school, teach me to ride again, keep me safe. Whatever Samuel should have—could have—done with his life, the one he ended up with is because of me.
So Samuel might have left, freed of responsibility to me, but I’ve never wanted to live my life anywhere but Prospect. I love the way the mountains cleave the sky, and the valley cradles its people. I love knowing the heralds of each season and hearing comfort in the call of the creatures that make this corner of Montana home. I love that I don’t have to explain myself to the people here, that my history and most of my hurts are known to them without my having to speak them aloud. Maybe I don’t see the town for what it really is. Maybe I’m too willing to see the good in the place and not the bad, to overlook the poisoned land and broken bodies, the empty storefronts and struggling businesses. I don’t think something is worthless because it’s damaged. I don’t think that because something’s been hollowed out it can’t still hold beauty.
I used to think these were admirable traits. That seeing the good in what others could not meant I was somehow better than them, kinder, more insightful. But now, more and more, I think I was just naive. Maybe if I loved this place less, Samuel wouldn’t have felt the need to defend it with a bomb. Maybe if I loved him less, I would have realized he was the kind of man who would.
Too rarely did I work up the nerve to ask the questions he needed to hear, point out the fallacies in the Patriot- or Posse- or sovereign-endorsed talking points he brought home, object to his prejudices. I ignored the strains of conspiracy I heard in his speech, let them solidify into fact in his mind, told myself they were just ideas, just talk. Unimportant, insignificant. Too often I looked for the best in my brother when I should have suspected the worst.
I can’t change how I saw Samuel, how I treated him, challenged him, or didn’t. He’s not here.
Hawkins is.
“You’ve got a lot of pills in your medicine cabinet,” I say, staring at the remnants of my burger. I’ve kept my voice low, partly for discretion and partly because I’m only half convinced I should speak, and for a long minute Hawkins doesn’t say anything and I think maybe he didn’t hear me.
“You’ll remember I got hit by a truck,” he says finally.
“You’re getting them from a lot of doctors.” I remind myself I’m trying to do right. I’m trying not to make the same mistakes I made with Samuel; I’m trying not to ignore things I shouldn’t ignore. I remind myself Hawkins could have put the pills on a higher shelf.
“That’s how you got to do it these days,” Hawkins says. “This crackdown because lowlifes sell their meds. Decent folks can’t get what they need.” He doesn’t sound mad, exactly. He doesn’t even sound cold, more sort of patient, like he’s indulging me. Like I’m just little Josie who doesn’t quite see the reality of the world the way the grown-ups do. I don’t say anything. “I got pain, Jo.” This time there’s a hint of anger in his voice; it’s oddly reassuring.
“I know you do.” I risk a glance at him. Hard features. I remember the way he’s made himself look me in the eye over the years even when he didn’t want to, and I try to do the same now. “I just worry that maybe you shouldn’t be using that kind of pill for your kind of pain.”
He either doesn’t know what I mean or—I think this more likely—he knows exactly what I mean. I could be wrong about all this. I don’t think I am, but I could be. I hope I haven’t made a mistake. I hope I haven’t made things worse. But if I have, I’ve done it in a different way than I did with Samuel.
Before Hawkins can say anything else, a middle-aged man with a beer in each hand backs into our table, loses his balance, spills one of his beers across Hawkins’s plate, sees the sheriff, and says, “Oh shit, man.”
“Think you mean, ‘Excuse me,’” Hawkins says. He holds eye contact with me a second longer before turning to the man.
“Shit, yeah. ’Scuse me.”
Hawkins takes the unspilled beer out of the man’s hand. “I think maybe you had enough, Jimmy.” The other man nods a few too many times, starts backing away. “You ain’t gonna drive, right?”
“Aw, no, man. No.”
I watch the exchange in silence. I’ve seen it before. Not with this man, but with plenty of others; it’s a reenactment of Hawkins’s interaction with Branson last time we were here. The straight-arrow sheriff. The hapless but probably harmless drunk. A stern but gentle sort of paternalism. I see Hawkins doing his best to be worthy of his white hat, his tin star. I see what the fantasy is to him, and I see his desperation to hold on to it.
“How ’bout you give me your keys and I bring ’em by your place in the morning?”
“I’m fine, man. I mean, Sheriff. For real.”
Hawkins pulls himself straighter, holds out his hand. Jimmy sighs but hands the keys over, then shuffles out the door with one of his buddies.
Another night I might have asked Hawkins if he ever thought he was just encouraging them to head to Split Creek instead, transferring responsibility to the Smokies out on the highway. I might have reminded him that this isn’t a western, that when people ride off the screen of Prospect, they just end up somewhere else.
But I’ve said enough for one day.
* * *
A prospective buyer is coming to look at Lockjaw Wednesday morning at eleven, and I’m up at six. Plenty of time to rake the barn aisle, clean the tack, groom the mule till she shines. But I do none of those things. Pick Lockjaw’s hooves and give her a cursory brushing, that’s all. I consider taking a short ride, in case it’s the last, but I’ll never enjoy it thinking that way. Instead I sit in a corner of Lockjaw’s stall and watch her eat. She has pulled the flakes of hay from the feeder and scattered them across the floor of the stall, stands with one foreleg forward and one back, nuzzling aside the stems to find the tastier leaves.
When I was too young to know better, I liked to think that Lockjaw was the descendant of one of the mine mules from the early days of Eden. There had been a dozen in the beginning, hardy animals lowered down the shafts to pull ore cars in the tunnels. At many mines, the pit mules lived their entire lives underground, working until they died a thousand feet down, but at Eden they were each hoisted up the shaft once a year, turned out in a pasture for a month before being sent back down. It was intended to be a kindness, I suppose, but I wonder whether it’s better to remind an animal of the sun or let him forget it forever.
When I was eight or nine, Samuel explained what it meant that mules were sterile, and I stopped imagining Lockjaw’s strength and tenacity were the products of good pit mule genes; as I got older, I understood there was nothing to be envied in the life of a mine mule. Lockjaw will be valued in her new home. She’s broke as can be, smart on the trail, knows how to pack game. Still, it’s scary to sell an older equine—too many end up at auction, too broke down for anyone but the kill buyer—and not something I ever expected to do.
I hear a rattle on the long drive, go to the entrance of the barn to see a pickup towing an empty stock trailer. Got to sell her, I remind myself. My painting sold at the festival auction for the equivalent of six or seven of my ordinary paintings—more than the winning canvas—enough for a security deposit on an apartment or a rental house, but that doesn’t help Lockjaw. Even if I could find a horse property to rent, I wouldn’t be able to take care of her on my own. What if she got cast
in her stall, or hung up in the fence, or just plain decided not to be caught? And without Samuel’s income, where would the money come from for the vet, the farrier, the joint supplements that keep the aging mule’s arthritis at bay? Got to sell her.
The prospective buyer is a man from Columbia Falls looking for a companion for his Quarter Horse mare, something quiet enough his nieces and nephews can ride it when they visit. I ride Lockjaw first—the man seems impressed by her steadiness when I mount, her tolerance of my swinging legs—and then it’s his turn. Lockjaw pins her ears briefly when he mounts, but she moves off when he clucks his tongue. Right away her gaits become stiff, her back hollow and neck inverted. The man bounces in the saddle, his elbows flapping at his sides. He told me he competed in reining, but I imagine he’s never so much as seen a sixth-place ribbon at the local fair. I’ve already decided not to sell to him when he snatches Lockjaw in the mouth with the bit—an accident, I think, a loss of balance—and the mule throws her head between her knees and lets loose a buck that would make a rodeo bronc proud. Launches the man a good ten or twelve feet.
The empty trailer bounces back down the drive. I should be disappointed—Got to sell her—but I give Lockjaw a carrot and an extra pat before turning her out into the pasture.
* * *
It’s one of those lush May afternoons I simultaneously long for and forget once they’re gone, only to be surprised and relieved by their return the following year. The greenest days can be brief in the valley, but they’re intense while they exist: the few deciduous trees are heavy with foliage, the high sun intensifying the color of the leaves, and the meadow is a shocking sort of green, an exaggerated hue that looks like something from one of my brightest canvases. In a matter of weeks the meadow will fade to gold, then to a shade that can most charitably be called yellow ocher, and soon after that the burn bans will start, and then the wildfires. But for now, for this short time, the landscape is a kaleidoscope of greens, and I can understand the decision to call the place Eden. The colors make me doubt my decision to paint this final piece using the earth. Might be better to allow myself the full palette of colors, to capture a favorite season one last time in this place. But the mud painting has started to take on the sepia tone of an old photograph, and that’s better, isn’t it? A painting about memory, after all. About the past more than the present, or at least of the past as a path to the present.
This newest—final—painting has progressed quickly since I found the perfect method of making the mud paint, of working with it on paper. I’ve already finished the mountains, the meadows, the sky. The barn is there, too, not quite done but well on its way. These elements all came easily, perhaps because I painted so many versions of them on my previously rejected canvases, perhaps because they don’t carry as much emotional weight as the house itself. I’ve been avoiding the house.
But it’s time to start on it in earnest. I’ve laid the lightest of washes down already, but on my paper the house stands as a blank shape in the landscape, a faintly grayish void surrounded by detail. With each layer it will get darker. With each layer there will be more shadow. I wish there were a way to paint the house that reflects the way it was built: beams first, then walls and floor and ceiling, roof, windows, house paint only at the very last. I wish I could paint it perfectly first, then add the years’ decay bit by bit, so slowly the damage reveals itself only when one remembers what once was. I wish I could paint the house’s history into the paper.
I sit for a long time, dry brush in hand. Think it might be one of those days when I bring all this outside—the easel, the board and paper, the cakes of mud, the brushes—only to take it back inside unused, unchanged. No. I don’t have that luxury: just twelve days left.
I dip my brush into one of the jars, touch it to the mud cake. Start to paint the roof into place.
* * *
I’m getting ready for work the next morning when I hear a round thud from the living room; when I wheel into the room I see a single delicate feather clinging to the glass of the picture window. I find the bird in the bushes below the window, a sparrow, its body cradled in the narrow branches. I think it’s dead, but when I pick it up one of its wings flutters desperately, and I feel the frantic beating of its heart against my palm.
I bounce it lightly in my hand to see if it’s just stunned and will fly away, but it’s hurt too badly. The kindest thing would be to wring its neck, but I don’t have the stomach for it. Would Asa try to heal it? Maybe the idea would offend him. Maybe a sparrow wouldn’t seem important enough to bother God with. But who is? Why did that boy on the bicycle in Asa’s story deserve to be made whole? Why not Asa’s mother, or his wife? Why not Emily?
The questions must have occurred to Asa, and I wonder if being a pastor means he has easy answers, or if instead they haunt him that much more. If he wants to believe in God or simply feels he has to. I don’t understand belief, why it comes to some people and not others, why tragedy strengthens it in some and shatters it in others.
It doesn’t seem like the choice people pretend it is. I wish it were that simple. Maybe I would choose to have faith, too, if I thought it was. Who wouldn’t want to believe in miracles, in the possibility that all could be made right with just a touch, with only a few prayerful words? It’s a tempting promise. But then there are the miracles not delivered. The questions. The doubt.
The sparrow gone still in my hand.
* * *
The end of my shift at Fuel Stop. Gregory One Bear suddenly in the doorway to the break room. “Have a minute to talk, Jo?”
“Of course.” Never good when the boss asks that. I expected this conversation a couple weeks ago, maybe, when there were still reporters’ cars parked in the lot, when my face was still in the papers. But the attention has dropped off dramatically—the last reporter quit staking out my driveway a few days ago; now he just stops by for an hour or two in the afternoons—and I’m surprised by, if grateful for, how quickly it has done so. (Does Asa feel the same way? Is it a relief to him, too, or does it feel more like abandonment?)
“Are you planning to leave Prospect when you … sell … your house?”
“I suppose I’ll have to.”
“It’s just you haven’t given notice.”
“Sorry, I didn’t think of that. If I end up leaving, of course I’ll work out the notice. I can drive up if I need—”
“It’s fine, Jo, it’s not that. I’m not worried about that.” One Bear glances at the register, speaks with his face turned away from mine. “It’s just, well, you’ve seen the books these last few weeks. You know I’m not making much profit.” He isn’t making any profit. Enough to keep the lights on and the beer coolers cold; that’s it. “How many sales did you make today?”
Three. A six-pack of Rainier. A T-shirt screen-printed with trout spelling out the word Montana. Ten dollars’ worth of gas. “You’re closing.”
“Not right away,” he says. “But when they build that road and there’s no reason for the tourists to come through town anymore … You know I can’t compete with that damn Gas-N-Go.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I got a cousin has a private campground outside Glacier, says he can take me on soon as Going-to-the-Sun opens. He’s looking to retire, so it’ll be mine to run after this year.”
I pull my keys from my bag, put them back. The jangling too loud. “Sounds like a good opportunity.”
“You can stay till I close, if you want to. I figured you’d be leaving anyway.”
I don’t answer. Don’t want to admit I still haven’t made any plans.
“Well.” One Bear scuffs one of his boots against the tile. “I’m happy to be a reference if you need one.”
“Thanks.” I try a smile, but it feels like the same forced expression I’ve found myself wearing time and again over the last few weeks. Something foreign, something practiced. One Bear knows me well enough to notice.
“It’ll work out for you, Jo,” he s
ays. “You’ll find something.”
“I know.”
“Probably for the best, really,” he tells me. The sound of tires in the parking lot. We both look up, but it’s only the elementary school bus making a U-turn at the end of its short route. “This town just don’t got much to offer anymore.”
* * *
There’s a missed call from Hawkins when I get off work. I call him back from the parking lot.
“I ever tell you how much I hate senior prank season?” he asks by way of greeting.
“Every year.” I’m relieved he sounds friendly, but wonder if it means he’s already dismissed what I said about his pills. “What is it this time?”
“Car on the roof of the old high school.”
“That’s a recycled one. Class before me did that.”
“So they did,” Hawkins agrees. I hear someone shouting in the background, the heavy clank of metal on metal. “An old El Camino, I remember right.”
Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind small talk, but he’s stalling. “You called me?”
“Devin wanted me to ask you something.”
I’m silent.
“He wanted to know if Samuel hunted, so I said sometimes.” I immediately think of the mountains. Samuel didn’t hunt much when we were there. The noise. But he’d had the deer rifle, took a young buck once. “Then he wanted to know what he hunted, and I said far as I know just deer and maybe sometimes a turkey.”
“Sounds like you answered for me.” The words come out stiff.
Hawkins doesn’t seem to notice. “Well, then he asks me if Samuel liked it—hunting—and I opened my mouth to answer and I realized I honestly don’t know. Thought maybe he’d let it go, but he insisted I ask you.”
“Did you tell him about the poaching?”
