Anne had started to speed while she was talking, nauseating Wade as the pickup zoomed headlong over the gravels quick rises and low troughs. Joe asked, politely, if she’d mind slowing down. She did, and apologized, and the rest of the drive was as smooth as it was dark.
Despite, or because of, the grinding flashing lights in his head, Wade gradually lost consciousness, sleeping the rest of the way to Meagher.
SOMEONE SHAKING HIM. Wade tried but couldn’t raise his head. He wasn’t asleep, but wasn’t awake. Someone spread a coat over him. It smelled of Joe.
“We’ll just let him alone, then,” Joe’s voice.
“Leave him here?” Anne’s voice.
“Yeah, well, you can see he’s dead out.”
“Can’t you just carry him up? I’ll help.”
Silence.
“I’ll just do it.”
Joe’s arms around him. Tugging. Lifting.
“Gettin bigger’n I thought.”
More lifting. Grunting. In the end, Joe needed her help.
IT SEEMED EARLY; it seemed late. Joe lay on the floor watching the yellow traffic light blink on and off. Wade asleep on the bed where he and Anne put him after carrying him up.
Some headlights pooled slowly on the ceiling, then swept down the wall to the floor, then gone.
Maybe hours, maybe minutes, Joe lay awake, thinking about the day with Frances. How coming back hadn’t made no difference. Worse, after only a day out here, he felt like he’d never left. More than ever in his life, he did not know what came next.
Dim noise from The Mint welled up through the floorboards. The flat thump of the jukebox. The click of billiard balls. The banter between old timers. Marly, her words indistinguishable, but not her laugh.
Headlights passed a second time. Joe looked out his window. The same car from the night before outside Anne’s window. And again, too, sounds of whispering boys. Clinking bottles. But this time, no answer. No window arguments, no screen door slapping shut behind her. In a while, the car left. Empty handed.
Joe sat in the chair, propped his feet up. Maybe he slept, mostly he churned. Marly’s laugh kept waking him up. Sleep just not a possibility, finally he went out and down the lobby stairs. A loose tread screeched, announcing his entrance.
Behind the bar, a man in black vestments and a clerical collar was washing a hi-ball glass. He filled it with gin and sipped, licking the hairline mustache on his upper lip. Seeing Joe, he poured another, which Joe declined, so the man shrugged, disappointed, then downed both glasses almost instantly. In the mirror behind the bar Joe saw Marly come out of the kitchen, straightening her hair. In the neons of bar light, it gleamed of red honey.
The man in clerical garb greeted her with a cheek kiss. “Arrivederci,” he gurgled, nodded to Joe and left, chanting to himself.
Marly continued behind the bar.
“What’ll you have, Joe?”
Joe stood up. He sat down. On the chair, but only the very edge.
“Joe, for Christ’s sake, it ain’t a trick question.”
Someone guffawed, a one-eared man standing at the end of the bar, wearing the fold-down rubber boots of an irrigator.
Joe surveyed the bottles stacked against the mirror and saw one with liquor the color of her hair.
“I’ll try that there.”
“Rocks or straight up?”
He looked at her. “Rocks?”
“With ice or without?”
“Oh. I guess it don’t matter.”
She sloshed a glass full of the liquor, slid it to him, and slung herself up on her bartender stool.
“You’re up kinda late.”
“Oh, yeah.” He looked at the gold-plate flower-work clock reflecting reds and blues of the neon beer sign in the window. “You probly want to close up.”
“No, finish your drink. Stay late as you want, I can just leave you help yourself. Week nights I won’t have much business now.”
The one-eared irrigator abruptly belched, tipped Marly good-night, and stumbled out, leaving Joe the lone client. He sat, drinking whatever it was, feeling it warm his insides. Marly cleaned a few already clean glasses; Joe studied the sanctuary of liquor bottles stacked against the mirror. It was an old mirror, its silver peeling, and everything it reflected looked worn and dirty. Including him.
Marly poured herself a silver cup of scotch.
“You’re about the last person in the world I would of ever expected for a guest last night.”
Joe nodded, toying with his glass, which she thought meant he wanted another. She filled it until liquor overflowed on the bartop.
“You look like maybe it didn’t go too well with Frances today.”
In the mirror, he saw what she meant. Haggard. Low down. Worn.
Cup raised to her mouth, Marly looked at him, then drank. The liquor glistened on her lips.
“Funny thing just came to my mind seeing you now.”
“Yeah. I can probly guess.”
“Nothin bad. Just how you still wear a crew cut. I realized I never known you with hair.”
“And I never known you without.”
She laughed and untied her hair, making it longer, making it redder, making it thicker.
“So. . .what’s your old lady do?”
“Old lady?”
“Well since you got your boy along, I figure there’s a mother in the picture somewhere.”
“Well, no. I mean. . .see, his mother only just died, and he’s not. . .I’m just trying to help out.”
She looked at him. A flash of blue neon across her eyes.
“Well, it’s none of my business anyways. Speakin of hair, it’s time for me to get out of yours.”
She rose, to leave. And didn’t. Instead, she poured each another round. Leaned forward, arms on the bar.
“Six months from now, you won’t recognize this place. Already got a stone man contracted to come shine up the marble outside, and that’s not even the beginning of it. Once that dam goes up, the business’ll be rollin in. Evan was just this morning talkin about how attractive this valley’ll become with some development. Hollywood north. Ha. But I guess it could be, so many big shots nowadays that need a place where they can all get away and be normal rich people together.”
She leaned closer, lines winking around her eyes while she pointed out the timber beams and tin ceiling and how rich people liked all that nowadays, looking around like her Grand was the eighth wonder of the world. “Here’s where I clip out all my dreams,” she said, pulling out several hotel trade magazines. She ran her fingers on the glossy photographs, murmuring about conversations with Evan, how clever he was about finance and real estate and renovation. How her Grand would soon be swelling with engineers, surveyors, earth-movers, and in a year how corporation retreats, celebrity ranches, condominiums and ski slopes would bring bags of money to Meagher.
“Joe, it’s what we always imagined but a thousand times over. Remember us wantin like crazy to go out into the world, and now look, I don’t have to go anywhere. Here it is comin to me.”
All the more Marly rhapsodized about it, all the more Joe felt blue about it.
“And so good for Annie, especially. You know she’s—well I guess you wouldn’t know, would you—how she’s always had a mind of her own. . .like with this waste of time survey job, but she’s got to learn it don’t last. It’s been hard with her, droppin out of school, actin like she don’t care about anything but boys and booze, but she’ll see. One a these days. What a great opportunity this is. She’s a good kid at heart. You’ll see.”
Joe nodded, realizing what a small speck in Marly’s life he’d been, A few summer months. Out of all her years.
“One thing I could never understand, Joe. How you could ever leave all this? There’s days I’m crossin the street, I look up, there’s peaks glistening any which way you look, and I just can’t imagine why would anyone ever want to go anywhere else.”
“Yeah, it’s. . .somethin,” Joe said, spirits
falling. What could be better than the place she described?
“This town is goin to boom, Joe; I hope you appreciate what Evan’s doin here.”
“If it’s gets Wade a good home, that’s enough for me.”
Marly tossed back her head and drank.
“Imagine you might feel a little sad too, though. Losin the ranch and all. Too bad you couldn’t somehow keep it.”
“Yeah, well Marly, it ain’t even mine to keep.”
Now Joe stood to leave. And didn’t.
“Joe?” Marly touched his fingers. “I am glad to see you again.” She withdrew her hands and folded them in her lap. “We all felt bad after Scotty died too; nobody ever said it was your fault.”
“Maybe they never said it.”
“What they said was, why did he go and run off, anyway. That’s what nobody can understand. Least of all me.”
“What’s to understand?” Staring into his drink. “There was nothin for me here.”
Joe noticed the anger in her eyes as they flashed up at the clock.
“No, I guess not, was there?”
She rose to flick off the neon signs, darkening the bar even more.
“Can’t blame a man for wantin to get out in the world. And. . .you found what you wanted, I guess.”
She walked to the front to lock the main entrance, then headed to the back and up the stairs.
“Help yourself to anything, Joe. Just kill those lights when you’re done.”
JOE SAT TIMELESS time. Fingerpainting in the film of liquor under his glass. Feeling small when he had meant to be big. Purging persistent thoughts, of Marly now, of then, of the days following their encounter on the haystack. . .then like now he could think of nothing else. . .
. . .the red-haired Croft girl, how her heat had steeped his sunburned skin, had thickened sweaty cilia on his arms. Unwashed, he fell asleep with her scents at night, woke to her each morning. His daily dread of town school gave way to eager fantasies, anticipating a second vision.
For three straight days, the school bus stopped at the cut bank along Sheepeater Croft’s place; for three straight days, his daughter didn’t appear. Then she did, the fourth morning, at the last minute, bolting out of the adjacent sheep wagon, half-dressed, just in time.
As ever, in the same soiled incompletely buttoned ankle-length dress, she walked the gauntlet to the back, past all the other ranch kids, knotted in unwelcoming groups, of girls covering their giggles, of boys pelting spit-wads and catcalling animal grunts. But this time Marly Croft didn’t hiss back like always, bubbles of drool in the corner of her mouth, eyes rolled back her eyes show only the whites, didn’t lift her dress to flash herself, and cause uproars of girls shrieking disgust and boys howling obscenities. This time, she was impervious to the rain of insults, silently ignoring them, continuing with purpose toward the back, all the way back, to Joe Meeks.
Where she stopped.
Different, cacophony quieted in puzzlement.
Where always before she was just another scourge to avoid, now visions of her nakedness, her young womanhood. . .he couldn’t look but at the floor.
So it stood, strangely tranquil, different, the cacophony quieted by puzzlement, until she sat down next to him.
When pandemonium erupted. Word spread like fire. When classes let out that day, Joe found himself surrounded by a weaving tribal circle of town kids, which opened only to deliver Marly, goading her with sticks as though afraid to touch her, shoving and kicking her together with Joe. “Kiss, lovebirds!” they chanted, “Kiss!” It was a new dimension of torment, and Marly went crazy, leaping headlong into her attackers, scratching and grabbing hair. Joe, whirling and spinning and lovesick, tried to get her away, delighting the raucous town kids even more, and they jeered with redoubled viciousness.
The next day, it all ended. That morning, as the school bus passed Sheepeater Croft’s, their motorized sheep wagon headed south into the mountains. Marly did not get on the bus that day, or any day thereafter. Joe found out that every spring Sheepeater Croft awoke from his long winter’s drunk to herd some lower valley rancher’s sheep to the summer meadows of Independence Basin, yanking his daughter out of school to help him with his labors.
Those last days of school Joe spent listlessly looking out windows. He had never missed another living thing like this in his life.
THE MINT, THE hotel, the night, dead quiet. Joe by himself. Behind the bar. Sampling shot by shot each bottle lined up on the back counter, left to right, front to back. None of which, so far, had made a drop’s worth of difference.
“You’re still at it, Joe?”
He saw her first, a granulated apparition, wavering in the mirror.
Marly again.
“Here she is.” Joe took a soap-stained glass from the sink, sloshed a honey-colored liqueur into it.
“One more round for the lovely first star of morning.”
She stayed her ground, kept back, next to the pool table, smoothing a rip in the threadbare green velvet.
“Not in a drinking mood, I guess?”
“In the mood to get somethin off my chest.”
Joe nodded, tipped his glass to her, woozy, light headed.
“You had me going that summer, Joe, you and all your plans, all the ideas you had for us. Even after you took off without me, I knew you’d be back. You’d work out whatever you felt, Scotty dyin, and be with me soon enough. Years I figured that, Joe. Then after that, years I hated you. Not till today, I never saw it no other way.” She folded herself in her arms, looked down, then up again. “Now, I can only say thank you. One way or another, whatever happens, or don’t, the waitin, the hatin, is over. I’m sorry, Joe. Don’t hold it against me.”
Joe reached for another bottle, and its dark green syrup contents.
“Fortunately for me, bartender, I’m all drunk,” Joe said to his mottled looking self in the mirror. “These people; drive a man to drink. Here’s to feelin no pain.”
He saw, thought he saw, Marly gone. He drained his glass, dutifully fumbled and found and switched off all the lights, made his way to the lobby. Stopped at the foot of the stairs, sensed more than saw her, inches from him, but nearly invisible. As though it could see in the dark, her palm found his cheek. Resting there, familiar, warm, steadying him in his swaying stupor.
Then gone. Footsteps up the stairs. The light creak creak on their loose treads.
WADE, WHEN HE woke, dreamily dreaming, his headaches were gone.
And so was Joe.
Not in the room, not down in the lobby. Not in the cafe, the bar, not up or down any street, the sheriff’s office, the filling station, nor any other place Wade found open. He stood out on the pre-dawn street, kicking gravel back and forth, wondering: had Joe left him. Had Joe actually really finally gone and left him.
Back in The Grand, Wade sat in the booth in back, weighing his options. He’d be okay; he just needed attitude. Like Joe told Anne. It was all about attitude. He’d just need to think of something, so he thought what that something could be. For instance, in only one day in Meagher he already knew people, so like, for instance, Frances; he could feed animals and stack hay for her. Anne; he could help carry chain for her. Marly; clean or do dishes, trading for food.
Thinking of food, he realized then that, first, he was famished, second, he didn’t have any money. When at the same time, he felt a hand tousle his hair.
“How’s it going, chief?”
Wade looked up. Through the cloud of cigarette smoke: Evan Gallantine. And Wade sat back, happy.
“I’m all better; I have to ask you something.”
“That’s the ticket. Good man.”
Evan taking a seat, when Anne came out, rushing to and late for work, but seeing Wade, she stopped. Taking in that it was just the two of them.
“Where’s Joe Meeks at?”
“He’s gone.”
“He ain’t goin up the Hellwater with me today?”
“No, he’s. . .”
/> Noticing her mother heading toward them, Anne glanced at the wall clock and took flight out the front. Evan crushed out his cigarette, souring the air with the after burn.
“So actually, where is the better half, Wade?”
“Wade is the better half, ain’t you noticed?” Marly joining them, toweling her hands. “Joe’s up sleepin it off no doubt.”
“No, Joe’s gone.” Wade leaned toward Marly. “I have to ask you something.”
“What d’you mean, gone? Gone where?”
“Just gone, you know; gone gone.”
“No, Wade,” Evan said, “we only mean where did he. . .”
“Really, you guys. I mean, he’s not upstairs, he’s really just. . .”
“Never mind.” Evan rose. “Now I get you. Come on, Wade.”
THE PICKUP SPED across the open meadows where the Hellwater meandered along the lower basin plateau before plummeting down the front range into the great eastern plains. Wade in the passenger seat, leaning almost into the windshield, scanning for any sign of Joe Meeks.
“He can’t be far,” Evan Gallantine mused, “though he made it further than I’d imagined he would. He must have left in the middle of the night.”
“Maybe he hitched a ride.”
“Not a chance. Not since, back several years ago, a local ranch hand picked up a couple young hitchhikers on this same stretch. Those freaks befriended the poor guy, led him to somewhere remote, then ate him.”
“Ate him?”
“Uh huh. Bludgeoned him, cooked him, lived off him, then disappeared. A game warden found the leftovers, but not those two. They got caught long after, completely by accident, picked up in some unrelated drug sting in Colorado. When they had to empty their pockets, cooked fingers spilled out. There’s no chance Joe hitched a ride.”
“Yeah but I bet Joe doesn’t know, though.”
“No, probably not. A lot of things he doesn’t know.”
Wade spotted him first, standing in a turnout of windswept spruce, lit by the first rays of sun, jutting his thumb out at them.
“Look at him, Wade. Would you pick him up?”
Certainly he looked unsavory: Matted bristle of hair, unshaven face, his shirttails out. Evan pulled over; Joe shuffled up, then stopped short.