And so it was decreed, the first annual Meagher Graduation Week.
This year as before, the high school band kicked off with a ceremonial march through town; this year again setting a new record, two dozen straggling underclass boys and girls, including many who could read the music, and several who could also play it. As always, as they rounded unevenly onto First Street, the honored seniors in ill-fitting gowns merrily jeered and pelted the band with the odd crab apple, then fell in line behind. As ever, the parade stopped in formation, of sorts, at the Major Thomas F. Meagher statue. There, thick hands of applause exhorted them to play more, because, though they played the same song they didn’t play it the same way, and so they impressed the crowd with their seemingly unlimited repertoire. Homemade fetishes waved, boots tapped in the street, husbands and wives two-stepped in the dirt. Graduates were called alphabetically to cast up their diplomas and tattered caps, ticker-taping the sky, all to the raucous cheers of all Meagher and the occasional curious visitors, whereupon the acned rabble continued on its way the two miles to the hatchery, blazing their path with the breadcrumbs of discarded liquor bottles.
And thus began their final saturnalia of childhood. For the seven debauched days thereafter, with the last blush of innocence on their cheek, these rookie adults would drink themselves into oblivion, fighting and singing and necking and diddling in the box elder brush with abandon. All week Castle Creek would flow with beer foam, adolescent vomit, and alcohol-clarified urine, male and female commingled. All night angry beaver tails would slap the pond waters in vain as the pulchritudinous youth invaded their dams to clumsily, though ardently, enact their human copulations in the soft and accepting mud, secreting into it their robust human fluids. And inevitably, afterward would come the small rash of pregnancies, the frenzied claims and counter-claims, negotiations in front seats of cars, and hasty marriages as a consequence of vaguely remembered pleasures. In this way as well, the local population decline was reversed, as the incidence of adolescent autocides declined, and the bounty of last year’s crop of spring wheat babies bouncing on their grandmother’s hips rose, every bright-eyed one as uncertain of its fathering as positive of its vacuous future.
VERY LATE ON the first night of festivities, the Mint finally emptied, Marly’s only remaining customer was Father Sterling, ruddy faced happy in the aftermath of his largest service to date. Wade was shooting pool with Squash, learning the complicated shots developed by ages of bar flies to effectively utilize the long stitching where Marly had repaired green felt with patches of old hats.
Helping himself to more peach schnapps, Father Sterling took Wade’s arm while Squash lined up a bank shot.
“Son, you are unquestionably the most talented acolyte I have ever had the chance to encumber. You must not quit. Not now at least. Please, tell me you will not.”
Wade shook his head. “Why don’t you try Squash?”
“Aw no, that poor post-pubescent soul? I can’t abide a boy whose face looks like it caught fire and was put out with an ice pick.”
Father Sterling cackled his way back to the men’s room, but Wade himself envied Squash’s face, pocked as it was with spontaneously bursting whiteheads. Wade’s own face still remained clear as a boy’s, and though in truth he had a rash of pimples on his shoulders, what good was acne where nobody could ever see it?
Squash wasn’t saying so, but it was obvious to all that he was staying late waiting for Anne, who had left town to spend the day off with her boss and his family. Earlier in the day, Marly Croft had sat him down and force-fed him beer. . .despite that he didn’t ever drink. She told him she had been doing some thinking about careers, his in particular, she told him. She told him she was considering, eventually, giving him a share in The Grand, along with herself and her daughter. Listening to her coaxing words, he saw his future coalesce: what with inheriting the family creamery, and the expansion coming to Meagher, taking over the Grand as well? He would easily become town’s most prominent entrepreneur. It didn’t need any hinting by Marly, who better would ever come along for Anne? She was destined to be his, whether she knew it or not didn’t matter. What better option did she have?
Now, idling at pool with Joe Meeks’s kid, Squash had real objectives to contemplate: Maloney’s Dairy-Gold, Marly’s Grand, Anne’s hand in marriage. His expanded creamery, with spotless aluminum equipment like he had seen on the visit to Denver, rows of separators gushing white milk and thick cream, the gleaming stainless steel churns and automatic packagers. He foresaw himself as the clean-faced smiling Mr. Lowell Maloney arm in arm with Mrs. Anne Croft Maloney, beautiful of buttermilk skin and mellifluous voice. All a delicious end of life under the tutelage of the overbearing Edna Maloney and the humble homely Charles Maloney.
When Anne did return, she passed by humming to herself as though lost in thought and as though he, Lowell Maloney, were just anybody. But Squash knew better now. He knew their destiny. He knew them as the envy of every Meagher has-been or would-be bride, their lives the fruition of two childhoods of solitude and deprivation. He stood. Indomitable. Unwavering. He took fire, anticipating the day when he could dish it out to Anne like she had dished it out to him. As she went past him, pretending she wasn’t at all aware of him, he took her arm.
“Hey!”
Anne whirled, then saw it was only Squash.
“Damn you Squash, just ‘cause you work for mom now doesn’t mean you can grab-ass as you please around here.”
“Anne, your mom don’t say what I do or don’t do. You neither. I say.”
“Then tell yourself to do somethin useful, like go wash your face.”
She pulled her arm back but he held on tighter. “I think you better try bein nicer to people. It’s time you faced facts. Even your mom sees how we’re a good match. But I won’t always be here for you.”
Enraged, Anne yanked free, yanked so hard she fell into the cue rack and broke it. Chunks of plaster fell to her feet. Wade stepped out of harm’s away as she seized a cue stick, her face burning with the low hanging pool table light.
“Squash, I swear, one of these days.”
Despite her brandishing the thick shanked cue, Squash advanced on her, impressed by his own audacity.
“I ain’t backin down to you no more, Anne.”
“I don’t care what you do. We ain’t married, in case you ain’t noticed.”
He grabbed her waist. “Not yet, maybe.”
Anne went white. Suddenly it was not Squash clutching her, it was fate.
“You asshole!”
She swooped the cue stick down across his shoulder. He fell back as another blow immediately followed. Father Sterling, returning from the bathroom, turned to Wade.
“Ten bucks that she’ll skunk him thoroughly this time.”
“Anne honey?” Marly came around the bar. “Please don’t tangle with our help. Sweetheart?”
Anne ignored her, raining successive blows on Squash, who backed away to the door, smarting not from the beating but from the surprise, genuinely astonished that Anne wasn’t behaving the way Marly led him to expect, not whatsoever at all, and he wondered, was he premature in his proposal? Then with one look into her wilding savage eyes he all at once understood. Her anger was no different than his own. It was not at him, any more than his was at her. It was bigger. It was at the boys who scoffed behind her back by day then plied her with booze by night. At them having their way with her and worse, letting them, worse yet, daring them. At the inevitability of their common Meagher fate. Deflecting her pummeling attacks, Squash understood they shared the same futile rage, and he silently cursed heaven for its determination to forever keep her from him. Then he stopped fending her off, dropping his arms, exposing himself.
“All right,” he shouted, “go ahead; have it your way! But one of these days you’re gonna realize I’m the only one who don’t deserve it.”
He flung open the door and left. Anne glared after him, lowering her now broken cue stick.
&
nbsp; Marly stepped wearily, and hesitantly, toward her daughter.
“How come you got to be so hard on him? He’s been so nice lately, as far as I can see.”
Anne turned. “You put him up to it, didn’t you? Part of your big plan, right?”
Marly took the cue from her hands. “Anne, you could do a lot worse.”
“And if maybe I want to make my own plans?”
She was breathing heavily, trying to contain herself. Then turned to head up.
“I know I sure couldn’t do no worse than you ever did.”
WADE, WHO HAD eaten one breakfast in town already, was in Frances’s kitchen making another. Joe sat with her at the table. He looked at the clock. Anne, after she had dropped them off, said he should give her boss Norman an hour to get his crews out, then he could come by to meet with him.
The phone rang. Joe acted like he didn’t hear.
The phone rang again.
“What about that phone?” Frances said.
“What do you mean? What about it?”
“What about why don’t you answer it?”
“It’s your phone.”
The phone rang again.
“Well?”
“Joe, ain’t nobody’d callin me anymore.”
Joe stood up, not to answer the phone, but to walk quickly to the door.
“I need to borrow your jeep.”
“Why ask me? Jeep’s yours. Like everything else.”
Wade came in proffering a heaping plate of bacon and eggs he had prepared. The phone rang again, and he picked it up. By then, Joe was gone.
“Evan’s on the phone,” Wade called outside.
Joe opened the jeep’s door. “Tell him I’m not here.”
“I already told him you were.”
“Then tell him I’m not.”
He climbed in and took off in a ball of exhaust, Wade left holding the door. One of the dogs, the golden, lumbered up the porch. As he scratched Butter’s ears—Wade had first christened him Buddy for his chumminess but revised it to Butter for his tawny coloring—the jeep roared back and lurched to a stop. Joe rolled down the window.
“You want to come along, or not?”
Wade shrugged, like it didn’t matter to him but okay if you want, but he immediately went to get in. As he opened the door, Butter jumped in ahead, swatting Joe’s face with his burr-studded tail. Joe slapped his rump, and Butter sat appreciatively; in all his dog days he’d never been allowed in the jeep. His large mouth panted with gratitude and bad breath.
Joe pulled out, the engine sputtering.
“This gutless thing.”
“You’re not supposed to use second gear,” Wade advised.
“What?”
“When Frances and I were driving she told me make sure I don’t use second gear. She said to save it.”
“Save it? Hah. That’s Frances for you. No wonder this clunker cuts out.”
He shifted hard into third, throwing Butter happily into Wade’s lap, where he was better able to stick his snout out the window.
“Wade, what was that you said again? About Frances and you? Driving?”
Wade leaned his head out with his dog. The river of air blew the long hair of Butter’s ears in his face.
“You aren’t thinking you’re old enough to be driving I hope. Hear me, Wade?”
“Oh man! Evan was on the phone, and I forgot to hang up.”
Joe gave Wade a sidelong glance, which Wade avoided returning.
“Wade?”
“Goddamn. I didn’t eat my bacon and eggs.”
Joe sighed.
“Oh and now you’re using swear words now too?”
He drove the rest of the way in silence.
THE SURVEYING WAS trig-leveling halfway up Sweetgrass Moraine, Anne working at a plane table. When Joe pulled up, she smoothed her hair and ran to the jeep.
“Norman’ll be here any minute; he said make sure you stay so he gets to talk to you.”
She quickly leaned in to kiss Joe’s ear, then returned to her plane table.
Wade hopped out to go look over her shoulder; Butter bounded out after him to mark his new territory, but Joe stayed put. After a while he got out, stood shielding his eyes in all directions as though making his own kind of survey, then inched his way over to Anne.
He was impressed, how she was contouring, plotting transit readings from notebooks onto topographical paper lined with a light blue grid. Looking over her work, he recognized the transposed topography of the cirque above Sweetgrass Moraine, its dry creeks and spidery ridges like the venation of a palm-shaped leaf.
Two boys from the crew returned, dropped all their transit equipment and staked out space for a break in the shade of Norman’s quarter ton pickup. Norman appeared a few minutes after.
He was younger looking than Joe expected, despite his wiry frame and bristle of white stubble, a no-nonsense man in earnest but not aggressively so, going straight to check Anne’s work. He rubbed his chin, made a correction, reminded her to darken every fifth contour, then initialed her worksheet. That done, Anne pointed; they both laughed. The boys had already fallen asleep.
Norman turned to Joe. Joe nodded; Anne grabbed his arm, pulling him nearer.
“This here’s my Joe.”
Norman shook Joe’s hand. “Dang glad to finally meet; she’s told me plenty enough about you.”
“Yeah; Same here.”
Norman’s bony fingers still held his hand.
“So I been hearing around that you’re holding things up.”
“Don’t see a reason for the hurry, that’s all.”
“Sure can’t blame you for that. Inheriting a place only to turn around and lose it. But what about how Anne’s saying you have questions about the dam site itself.”
“Well no, not exactly, I mean. . .anybody could see how down below at Bitterroot Gap is the perfect site for it. All’s I said to her was I didn’t get why you’re surveyin up here in Sweetgrass Moraine. A reservoir from Bitterroot Gap wouldn’t flood this high up.”
“Na, heck no. That Bitterroot Gap site was all done before me. I’m doing a timber survey.”
“Timber survey? For who?”
“Hellwater Reservoir Corporation.”
“HRC? This is all state forest land though.”
“Yeah, till a month or so ago. HRC traded some of its lower rangeland for this entire tract. I guess to bring in a big lumber operation here.”
“Timber here? It’s mostly all spruce; why trade valuable grass range for scrub trees. You wouldn’t make anything on it.”
Norman nodded. “I don’t see why either, but all the pressure they’re putting on us, I guess they need it whatever. And quick.”
Joe bent over the chart again; the longer he studied it, the more he puzzled over it, the more he could begin to trace out a saw-toothed image, of a lake, formed by, and fanned back upstream of, Sweetgrass Moraine.
In the midday quiet, Butter, hot from his territorializing, took up a spot at the feet of the boys in what little shade they’d not taken over.
Joe straightened up. “Thing is, to me anyway, just looking at it, you get the idea that Sweetgrass Moraine, with this big cirque behind it, would make a pretty sizable reservoir, deeper and not as long as at Hellwater Gap.”
“Oh I know what you’re getting at, Joe,” Norman said, folding up the chart, “but why waste the time on it?”
“Maybe for a backup to Bitterroot Gap, in case for some reason, it don’t work out?”
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t. They didn’t start me here till a month ago and that was after Bitterroot Gap was already approved. Nobody’d fund a backup site when the primary’s locked in. Knowing those HRC folks, I imagine they are just making sure they got every kind of survey they might need.”
Joe nodded, but thinking about Emma’s grave that rainy burial day, the way that rainwater dammed so fast behind the loose excavated soil.
“Might be a lot cheaper though. The way Swe
etgrass Moraine makes a natural earthworks itself, all’s you’d have to do is close up the channel where the cataracts are. Wouldn’t need the heavy concrete work you need at Bitterroot Gap.”
Norman swept back a shock of his white hair. “I suppose that might explain the profile leveling then; they’d need it to size up water area and volume. But it can’t be right.”
“How come not?”
“Well then it’s a heck of a different story altogether. So I don’t see how that’s what’s going on. If it were, you’d want the Corps of Engineers in here right quick.” He looked off, thinking, his face reddening. “Then again, the way they’ve been pressuring me to finish up, I think I better go down and get this all straightened. . .”
“Hey, hold on,” Joe exclaimed, “I was just saying. I’m no expert.”
“You’re an engineer, aren’t you?”
“Not, you know, exactly. I mean, not that kind of engineer.”
“It’s engineer enough for me, because now you mention it, it does make a certain amount of sense. Never hurts to clear things up.”
Butter yelped. The dog had been sniffing the rich smelling boot of one of the sleeping boys and that boot had suddenly shot out and kicked him. He loped back to Wade and sat, getting his head patted distractedly.
Norman reached for Joe’s hand. “Thanks for coming by, Joe, but I gotta get these lamebrains going on the next station, before I drive down to town.”
“Norman, I. . .”
But Norman was off rousing his crew and running them up the slope. Joe stood worrying his fingers into his temples, and didn’t notice Anne beside him until she leaned her hip against him.
“Joe, if you’re right, maybe you don’t got to sell.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he wanted to say, but it felt pleasant, her closeness, the sun, the quiet rustle of timber, so he let it go. A breeze fluttered the papers on the plane table, and he looked them over again.