“Took over?” Anne said. “Took over what?”
“Hey, damned if she don’t talk after all. C’mon, Anne, get your ass in here. What do you got to be ashamed of?”
“Who’s ashamed?”
She jumped up, pulled off boots, threw off jacket and blouse, dropped jeans to ankles, and walked naked and painlessly across the same travertine grit Harlo had yelped over, but stopped short, at water’s edge, to consider her reflection.
“There now, Wade. Ain’t she a sight?”
Not sure he was allowed, Wade wasn’t about to look, and moreover not sure he wouldn’t be called on next.
“She looks even better outa the wrapper, don’t she?”
“What wrapper?”
“Harlo, you’re such a bullshit artist. Think I can’t tell that?”
“Damn these modern girls, think every little thing’s wrong with em when there ain’t, not even one damn thing at all. . .’xcept they won’t take no man’s word for it. Wade, get the hell in here; don’t make me come after you.”
Knowing Harlo would not let it go, with guarded maneuvering Wade stripped, just to his shorts, and slipped hurriedly into the water.
“That’s more like it. Now tell me this ain’t heaven.”
And so they soaked, and talked, or not, and Wade liked how the gloss of water colored their submerged bodies, Harlo’s rippled umber fur, Wade’s sheathed skinny white, Anne’s brown areolae and auburn triangles.
Harlo noticed Wade’s smile, and grinned himself. “Lookit us. We look like morning glories floating in a lily pond.”
Anne, looking over her own reflection, said, “Harlo, can I ask you somethin, and get a serious answer?”
“Hard to say. Probly not.”
“Outside of around here, which don’t count, how would I look compared to New York City girls?”
“Anne, you don’t know the half of it, how pretty you are. Hell, lookit Wade. Can’t take his eyes off you.”
“I’m serious, Harlo.”
“So’m I. Course you are. Prettier’n any city slicker girl.”
“Joe’s been in New York, he don’t seem to think so. At least he don’t act it.”
“Aw Christ, Anne. That’s just differnt.”
“Why?”
“Ask him yourself, he’s right up there.”
Which Joe Meeks was, sitting on an outcrop above them. Harlo, then Wade, called to him but he didn’t answer.
“The hell with him,” Harlo said.
“How come he was able to get away, Harlo?” Anne asked.
“Get away? He only just left. Have to do more’n leave, you want to ever get away from this shithole.”
“At least he made somethin of himself.”
“Not enough; lookit him up there. You can’t tell?” He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Hey you damn eaglet, c’mon down here. You too good for us?”
Joe continued to ignore them. Anne became irritated.
“What’s wrong? We ain’t attractive enough for you?”
Harlo chuckled. Wade laughed too. He had found a corner where his youthful skinny body was not so public, and he felt safe from any possible teasing from Harlo.
“Well, you comin or not?” Anne yelled again, and this time Joe answered.
“I will when you’re decent.”
Harlo laughed, grinning at Anne, daring her.
“Here’s decent for you then.”
She moved to the shallows, stood up, stood in full view, water falling in pearls from her naked skin, hands on her hips, head tilted tauntingly to the side. She felt cocky. Sure of herself.
Joe looked away.
JOE LOOKED AWAY, but couldn’t stop seeing, couldn’t avoid the memory, the flood of them. . .
. . .those weeks after she stopped riding the bus to school and the urges he felt—and hated that he did—for Marly. She became an obsession like he had never known. He didn’t know or care why. From the day Harlo broke his arm and Joe first spotted her in Independence Basin, he woke very morning to wanting only to go to her again. Each school day he could, he skipped the bus, slipped out back, saddled Loner, and spurred him the three hours to the Independence mine, pressing against the saddle, squeezing Loner’s mane. Once there, he dared approach no closer than the rocky outcrop overlooking the mineral springs near her cabin. All day thereafter he did nothing but wait and watch, impatient for the next glimpse of her tangled red hair and sun-browned arms. He kept cautiously hidden though was well aware Marly was well aware of him, well aware even as she undressed to bathe in the springs, well aware of his breathless anxiety. He stayed too long. Only when she dressed and returned through the reeds to her cabin—the same cabin the winter before when he had shot the blind bison, only when the dusk began to fall, did he leave.
So it was until, one day, she wasn’t alone. A black-haired man, not old Sheepeater Croft, a grown-up young Joe had never seen before. He sat across from her in the water, naked but for his sunglasses. Whoever he was, or why he was with her, he shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t be either. Joe burned. He sulked. He walked circles around his lair like a wounded cougar cub. He raged, jealousy boiling over in him even more after he mounted Loner and left.
The next time, it was only Marly again, the man of the time before nowhere around. This time young Joe approached her, this time he meant to sit across from her. But he didn’t, at first. Nor did he speak. He squatted and threw stones, letting fly his heartsick foolishness.
“Get in, why don’t you?” she said.
He savagely took off his boots, nothing else, and waded in. His dusty pants fizzed in the hot mineral water. He felt dizzy, from the heat, from the craving, from the anger, from being helplessly lost. At which point a sheepdog appeared, Scotty’s dog, sniffing the pool.
Joe stood, furious anew, yelling to the trees, where he knew his brother was shadowing him, ordering him home, threatening a beating, pleading to be left alone. Knowing Scotty couldn’t understand, let alone obey.
“You oughta treat him nicer.” Marly rose out of the pool. “He just wants your company.”
It was late; she left for her cabin. leaving Joe at a loss. So he decided to leave, he felt so jealous; he decided to stay, he felt so lonely. She was no help, making no invitation for him to follow her, no command not to. He racked his brain. He felt senseless. He climbed on to Loner and rode home.
Thereafter Scotty openly joined him, careful to trail well behind, never too near, but always in sight. For all that Joe swore and cajoled and threatened and pleaded, Scotty would not go back. He might retreat, dawdle, hang back, disappear, but every time, when Joe looked behind, there was Scotty. Always Scotty.
And so it went, the next day and the next. Joe more and more wanting to tell Marly that. . .that something, he didn’t know what, but something. It was never any different
And then one day Joe turned and he was back, that man, standing over them, hair sweating, sunglasses gleaming. He set down his backpack, took off his boots, and soaked his feet.
Joe ignored him. Marly did not.
“So. You ‘bout finished up there I guess?”
Joe heard hurt in Marly’s voice.
“Not yet. There’s a formation the other side of Mount Contact there, the Stillwater Complex. My company wants another look at a quartz monzonite vein that cuts into there.”
“For gold?”
“Oh no, for PGM. Platinum Group Metals. Palladium. The Russians have most of the known sources, but they’re getting depleted, so, palladium’s worth a lot more than gold about now.”
In his face, his rutilant eyes, his short black curls, Joe saw the devil. The man caught that look.
“Don’t get all worked up, now, fella. I won’t be staying. By the way, I’m Vaughn Marlowe.”
Joe shrank into the water, furious that his mind had been read.
“Then where, after that?” Marly asked. “Alaska still?”
“Or Alberta. Wherever they want me.”
“Vaughn, I said I??
?d go with you. You ain’t forgot that.”
“No, but Marly. . .”
“You said I could.”
Joe looked at her, lonesome. His stomach rolled with grief and despair.
“Marly,” Vaughn Marlowe said, “I didn’t say that. How could that even happen?”
“I told you,” Marly sighed. “I want to get out. Of here. I want to see places, and things, just like you done.”
“See things? But it’s all here, right under your feet. This is where I’d want to be, if I could.”
Vaughn shouldered his pack. He smoothed Marly’s hair.
“I’ll be back,” he added, and he left.
Joe, beside himself with hatred for Marly, could no longer contain himself.
“You do it with him, don’t you?” he cried.
Not denying or acknowledging it, she stood.
“He’s nice to me. Nicer than anybody else ever was.”
She stared at her feet then left for the cabin. Joe, enraged, started after her. Stopped and came back. Dressed. Paced. Started down after her again. This time going inside, into her home, past the table with its flowers and tablecloth, into the back room, where she was sitting, on her canvas covered bedsprings. Hands on her knees. Sad.
He didn’t know what else to say and left.
The next time, he also smoothed her hair. She said, “That’s nice.” She smiled at him and touched his fingers. This scared him; he felt this was not the Marly he pined for, this was another girl, a new one, and he left.
And came back the next day and the next time after that he held her and she held him and the next time he held her harder, and she held him harder too. His heart pounding, his breathing difficult, his arms stronger from holding her tight; her arms just as strong from holding him just as tight. He stayed later, too late, nearly to dusk, aching, knowing he was learning from her what she could have only learned from. . .him. He decided he didn’t care. He lusted for tomorrow even as he left today, already aching for her, smelling her hair and the back of her arm.
A few days later, Vaughn was back, sitting outside the cabin, reading. The black in his hair shone blue in the bright midday shade.
He smiled when Joe arrived. “You look like you not only ate the canary, like you ate quite few of them.”
“What’re you doin here?”
“On my way back down to Meagher. Don’t worry.”
Joe sat down. Scotty limped to the nearby wood stack, the dog taking his side.
“That dog have a name?”
“Scotty don’t talk, you know.”
Vaughn nodded.
“He has a name for him, just that we don’t know what, since he can’t talk either.”
“His mind is somewhere else altogether, must be.”
“Just that he ain’t all there. That’s all.”
“He’s your brother?”
Joe nodded.
“He likes it here.”
Joe picked at some grass. “He likes it okay, mostly, I guess.”
Vaughn went back to his reading.
“What’re you readin about?”
“These? Geological abstracts.” He showed Joe. “This one about the Greater Yellowstone supervolcano.”
Joe glanced at it. “Guess you must find that in’eresting?”
“Are you kidding? Fascinating.”
“How come?”
“God, how to begin. Well, for example. Take this place. Simply speaking, we’re right here and now sitting atop one of the thinnest stretches of continental crust in the world. And since the mantle right underneath is unusually near the surface, it’s unusually molten. Most likely there’s a big vault underlying the park, and it’s like an underground chamber that over the eons fills up with magma. Eventually it starts to blister under all the pressure. That makes for quite a supersize lava dome. Given time, over thousands and tens of thousands of years, the dome has to give. It literally blows its top. Blasts the crust to smithereens, shoots fiery gassy magma a mile high, burns the sky, then cools back into particles, and what doesn’t get blown by upper winds all the way to Kansas all collapses back down and makes what’s called a caldera. Monstrous floods of lava smother every crook and valley in its way. The research in this particular article is about how new carbon dating indicates this has been recurring here more or less once every half million years. Which could mean there’s a cycle of some sort.”
“When was the last time?”
“Exactly the right question. That you asked it is interesting. How about that the last occurrence was 620,000 years ago.”
“So we’re goin to get blowed up again then?”
“We’re overdue for it, that’s for sure.”
“So how come you don’t leave then?”
“Well to make you miserable.” Vaughn laughed; his eyes twinkled at Joe. “And that, being a geologist, you can’t help wish to be just once in the right place at the right time. This certainly the right place. The time, though. Volcanic time isn’t exactly like clockwork. So what do you think?”
Joe spit the tall grass blade he was chewing and picked another. “That you’re full of it.”
“Think so?”
Marly came out to sit with them, but she didn’t join the conversation.
Vaughn picked up a white gray piece of rock. “What if I were to tell you that this dolomite, which caps almost the entire top of Mount Contact, is made of the skeletons of diatoms, teeny almost invisible creatures that fill the ocean, billions and billions of them, over millions and millions of years. When there’s no ocean within 1500 miles of here.”
“Really full of it,” Joe said, “up to your ears.”
He leaned lazily back against the cabin wall. Marly smiled, tucked her hands between her legs. Vaughn returned to his reading. And with his attention diverted, Joe reached his hand out to take Marly’s.
Shadows lengthened. The time to go came. He couldn’t. He wanted to never go. Nor did she want him to. She smiled, sad. He lowered his eyes, to hide his desires.
Eventually, though, he had to leave. Or suffer another whipping from his father. Which he wouldn’t mind, but so would Scotty too. He stood.
“Might see you around,” he said to Vaughn.
Vaughn stood to extend his hand. “Could very well be.”
“C’mon, Scotty. Gotta get back for chores. Get your dog too.”
Scotty stood up. As Joe walked to him, he noticed his eyes, how they seemed hollow and ringed with black. Like old Emma’s. Making him look old beyond his time.
HARLO ALONE IN the mineral springs, sunning his face in the light bouncing off the water; Anne, and Wade as well, had given up waiting for Joe to come down and join them. She dressed and together the two walked down to her pickup.
Not long after, Harlo opened his eyes to find Joe kneeling next to him.
“So what’s goin on, Joe?”
“Wonderin what you want to do, Harlo?”
“Soak a while, then try’n catch some trout.”
“I mean, about when you come back home.”
“Home?”
“You can’t be a mountain man the rest of your life.”
“Yeah, that much you got right. I don’t know, what the hell, get some kind of job. Though I doubt anyone’d hire me. For now, anyway, I’ll just lie low, keep to myself, live and let live. Hole up here till somethin better shows up.”
The sun fell behind the trees. Harlo groaned as he got out. He pulled on his pants and boots, then stood up.
“I ain’t the one to say I told you so, Joe, but you shouldn’t of took him up here with you.”
“Wade?”
“Scotty, you son of a bitch.”
Harlo took a cigarette from his jacket, dropped it, and when Joe bent down to get it, Harlo stomped on his hand.
“What the hell, Harlo?”
“That’s either for runnin off, or comin back, I ain’t sure which.”
He laughed, took the cigarette, and lit up.
“Guess you ha
d something to get off your chest about it after all. After all these years.”
“And now it’s off. Done. Over an out.”
Joe sucked dirt and blood from his knuckles.
“Seems like everyone thinks the best thing is sign over to Evan and let him get the most he can get for the place.”
“So what if you do? Yeah, count me with him. Get what you can get, Joe. What I’d do anyway.”
“Even if there’s a way to keep it.”
“Dang. You’re bad as your old man.”
“You don’t want to even try.”
“Hell no. Haven’t for years.”
“I don’t know. It’s. . .hard to believe.”
“Joe, you’re soundin more like Frances Meeks than Frances Meeks herself. If I’d ever thought there was a chance I’d get even part of that ranch. . .but forget that shit. I knew from day one I never would. And so’d Leonard, though he couldn’t ever admit to it. Joe, I don’t want the fuckin place. No one does. Somethin is tellin me that you wantin me to is more to do with you wantin it yourself.”
Harlo looked away, inhaling, exhaling. His shirt was buttoned crooked; the opal inlaid snaps flared chaotically in the last of the sunlight.
“What’s the M stand for, Harlo?”
“Say?”
“The M you put on the plaque for Scotty. I never knew he had a middle name.”
“I never either, I just made it up. Looked more official that way.”
“You got the dates wrong.”
“Yeah, I probly did. I never was good with figures. Let’s go.”
Harlo threw his stub down between them and they walked down through the bands of evening light lacing the trees.
“You got a good kid there, Joe.”
“Don’t necessarily make me a good father, though.”
“No, it don’t.”
“You’re either cut out for it or you’re not.”
“Agree with you there.”
At the grassy flats Anne and Wade were waiting by her pickup. Harlo squinted, first at Wade, then at Joe.
“Helluva resemblance, though. You two.”
“Maybe there is. I don’t see it though.”
“Oughta have another look. ‘xcept for Wade, we’re about extincted, us Meeks.”
Harlo clapped Joe hard on the shoulder.
“See you around.”
He took off back into his cabin, his lame leg flying.
Anne backed her pickup around, Wade turned around as he was about to get in.