So it was a relief, it did ease the sadness, when she learned Anne was fired. Finally things would turn for the better, the way they were supposed to. The way they were before, mother and daughter, Marly and Anne, since what good was prosperity unless they could share in it together?
Yet Anne seemed farther away than ever. Yes she quietly returned to waiting tables, yes now she kept her nails clean and her hair brushed, yes now she pleasantly accepted the endless flattery that came her way—Father Sterling holding her shiny hand, the chief of surveyors complimenting the rose in her cheeks, the gritty Ruth Loomis combing her hair, clucking on its healthy luster—but no, she was even more a stranger than before, utterly absorbed in her private thoughts, only God knowing what—or where—they were.
One night, another night wishing morning would come, hoping it wouldn’t, Marly gave up and went down to start the coffee. She saw Anne out in the street, watching dawn rouge the sky.
“What’re you doin up this early, honey? Can’t sleep either?”
Anne didn’t turn, letting sunrise shine her face.
“What d’you think is more beautiful, mom, the east at dawn or west at dusk? I can’t ever decide.”
Or on a dinner break one evening, Anne outside the lobby, staring down the darkening street.
“You alright, sweetheart?”
“Fine, mom. You ever wonder what it’s like where you can’t see the end of every street every direction you look?”
Marly didn’t understand much but she did understand one thing: This had something to do with Joe. So one afternoon she took the photo of the windy laughing couple and sat next to Anne.
“I found this in Joe’s room the other day.”
Taking the photo, Anne smiled. “Mom, you look so pretty. And like you’re really so in love.”
Remembering the plans, about to run away with Joe, leave Meagher forever, she was now certain Anne wanted the same. Marly exhaled, purging all air from her lungs, then walked away.
She knew she was turning into a shrew, sometimes harping irrepressibly on everything her distant distracted daughter did:
“Anne, don’t serve that! That plates’s filthy dirty.”
Anne looked it over. “It’s just for McComb, mom; his taste buds are in his stomach anyway.”
She laughed; Marly barked.
“Just please get it out before it gets cold. Is that too much to ask?”
“Okay, no sweat. Sorry.”
She didn’t even put up a good fight anymore.
One day heading out to the bank, Evan dropped in on his way to meet with county commissioners about opening vehicle access to the park.
“Good for you. Once you invest a bit in it, you’ll have quite the first class lodging here, Marly.”
“I didn’t know it wasn’t already.”
She looked it over, her Grand, and now she saw, in contrast to her vivid imaginings, he was right; it was sad, it was old, it was tired.
“God, Evan. There’s never any goin back, is there?”
“Life only goes one way, Marly. And that’s forward. Whether you like it or not.”
Pulling the heavy iron grate door into Treasure State Bank, her eyes leaden, her head heavy, she sat and was soon absently nodding as the loan officer leaned over his desk, like a snake-charmer with his important words: mortgage; equity; principle and interest; collateral; liability. In the end he sealed a large envelope with sheaves of forms, papers, pamphlets, worksheets and sample agreements. She rose, shook hands, and crossed the street. Damn. All these years thinking she was ahead of the game, now it was all she could do to stay even. Would it be so bad if things just never changed? If Meagher stayed just as it is was and really only ever ought to be?
Unsigned and unopened, she tossed the package on the lobby desk for Squash. Young and ambitious, let him deal; she didn’t have a clue and didn’t want one. She sat and leafed through her magazines. Their magic exhausted, she threw them aside. People drinking at her bar, people eating at her cafe, in the midst of the incessant noise of the world of people, she was alone and wanted to be more alone. Alone at the mirror in her room, toying with Anne’s hairbrush, she pulled out a clutch of her own hair, twined it into a braid, thinking, whatever happened to the little girl with the pretty hair?
AFTER WORK, COMING into her room, Anne finding her mother, waiting on the windowsill, framed by new burnt orange satin drapes pulled aside with dark green sashes. Windexed windowpanes gleamed late day sunlight onto walls newly enameled white. A refinished bird’s eye maple vanity set against the wall. A Persian style area rug covered newly lacquered flooring. A tall ceramic vase blooming big strands of lilacs at the side of the door where Anne stood.
“Somebody havin a baby?”
Marly laughed. “You like it?”
Anne took a tentative step.
“But why my room? I thought you were movin ahead with the kitchen first?”
“Oh I am, but this just seemed such a fun way for us to start off.”
Anne nodding, “Yeah, but, really, this should all be for you, Mom. It’s way more’n I need.”
“I think it’s just what you need, honey.”
Anne ran her hand along the cast iron frame of the new bed, framing her next words.
“It sure will make for a good luxury guest room, though. If I, you know, have to move out.”
“Move out?”
“Yeah, mom. See, Norman, he got hired up by Arapahoe Oil to survey these new water channels, and so, he was sayin how he wants to bring me back on. . .but it’d make more sense if I maybe got a place closer, since mostly the work would be. . .”
Marly noticed where a stain had bled through the new paint job, scarring the ceiling. She sighed.
“Mom, I know, but I’m not a little girl, an obviously. . .”
“Maybe not, but there’s a lot of ways you remind me of one.”
“. . .obviously you’re still my mother. . .”
“What a coincidence; that’s what I think too.”
“. . .but why won’t you ever see things my way once in a while?”
“Haven’t I? Haven’t I always given you free rein? Haven’t you always done what you want, no matter what I think? All I’m doin is lookin down the road at how there’s a great future here for you, but goddamn, Anne, there won’t be if you don’t grow up and help it along and forget this other nonsense.”
“That’s what you think it is?”
Marly looked away.
“You hate that I’m in love with Joe, is what I think it is.”
“Love? You’re callin it love now?”
“Yeah? Didn’t you? Once upon a time?”
“Well pardon me for bustin your bubble, but hopin to get a man to get you what you want—what you think you want—don’t make it love. You’re so damn sure he’s got a life out there with your name on it, well you tell me what happens a few weeks from now when he takes off.”
“It’s love when you laugh and feel happy to be alive. You just don’t want me to ever have what you couldn’t ever.”
Marly laughed. “Anne, in case you hadn’t noticed, bein in love with Joe Meeks is like drinkin water from a strainer.”
“Okay so I ain’t the all grown up expert, but are you? Maybe it never was him, it was you. You know so much what love is, so maybe that makes you too good for it. Too good for anyone. I don’t even know my own dad, that’s how good you are.”
“I love my daughter, I know that. Even if she don’t.”
“You had your chance, mom, don’t take it out on me.”
“Well, I see this is goin nowhere fast.”
Marly went to the door.
“Mom, why didn’t you just go off with Joe when you could of?”
“Why?” Marly turned. “I’ll tell you why. He left me. The only boy I ever loved and who ever really loved me, and he just up and left. I never knew why, or where to, an even if I had, there’d of been nothin I could’a done about it.”
She stood los
t in her thoughts a while.
“Honestly, Annie? Just thank God you’re not really in love with him. I’d feel very sorry for you if I believed you were. Trust me, I know.”
She looked once more around the darkening room.
“As for movin out, I guess I don’t care. You’ll do what you want anyway.”
WADE IN HIS boundless energy outside working on the tractor, the same old Ford 500 that Joe years before would have been out working on, the same old Joe who now sat in the kitchen only observing it, pumping dry axles with the grease gun, scraping corrosion from battery terminals, duct taping frayed distributor wires. The Joe who otherwise would be listless waiting for Evan to finalize the deal with HRC, the Joe who otherwise would be busy convincing himself that once again only he knew the right thing from the wrong thing and should be doing it, only now he wasn’t.
Frances, never the observer, bored with complaining she had nothing to live for after all these wasted years, hobbled out to oversee Wade’s project, hovering like an old blue heron while Wade grease monkeyed around on the long idle engine.
“For Chrissake, you didn’t bring out the spark plug wrench? Go on back to the tool shed for it then.”
Wade, no idea what he was looking for, knew by now most things Frances said eventually became clear, and sure enough, he knew it when he saw it, the long steel handled tool, knew it as if he had known all along. Taking it back to the tractor, going at the first plug, he could not loosen it whatsoever. He pushed, pulled, pounded, kicked, hung on the handle, no matter; he couldn’t make it budge.
“Why ain’t you squirted oil on it? I got to do every damn thing myself around here?”
Miffed now, Wade slopped on motor oil and lunged with renewed vengeance.
“Come on, yank the son of a bitch.”
He did yank, again, but this time was rewarded with a loud screech. He yanked again, and harder, the plug gave, and was out in no time. Surprised, he went straight on to the next, and, as though he had grown stronger, each one was all that easier to remove.
“You goin to change the oil, or do I have to think of everything?”
Wade looked up at her, and in that instant, Frances, sitting spread legged on a fallen cottonwood, had drifted off to sleep. A puff of breeze fluttered the still standing cottonwoods, which shook their leaves and powdered them both with cottony seeds, which in time made her sneeze but until which time, before she roused, Wade had changed the oil, put water in the radiator, emptied a gas can into the fuel tank.
“Well then go on an start the damn thing if you want.”
Wade grinned, hopped on the tractor seat, turned the key, but. . .nothing.
“What’d you expect? Battery ain’t been charged since before Leonard died.”
Finally Wade protested. “Well how the hell was I supposed to know that?”
“Same way you’re s’posed to know you got to take it out of gear and push start it.”
“Oh.”
Wade hopped back down, unblocked the wheels, put his shoulder behind a rear tire taller than he was and shoved. Shoved again. And continued to shove, Frances helping out, flailing her cane like a mad sorceress yelling “Harder!” and “Put weight into it!” and smiting the tire so hard her cane bounced and flew out of her hand. And with the shoving and rocking, the wheels, little by little, helped out by the down slope position of the tractor, gave it momentum enough to start rolling on its own.
“Get on now, goddammit!”
Frances teetering on her feet, Wade jumped on from behind.
“Put it in gear!”
He clutched and ground the shifter into first gear; when he let up, the massive engine stalled, sputtered, coughed, smoked, and finally caught, and by that point the tractor was careening straight into the field where Sorry was pastured.
Joe leapt from the table and ran out, but the action was too far away.
“Give it some damn gas!”
Wade grabbed and pulled the accelerator lever, too hard, too far, so that it chattered fiendishly up the metal nibs of the gauge, flooding the engine, causing the tractor to roar forward. He threw an apologetic glance back just as it burst through the barbed wire fenceline, shattering the row of old posts, and rocketed out into the field.
The sorrel filly sprang into a gallop alongside, sporting with the machine. Wade couldn’t hear what Frances was yelling, could only see her black hat waving, but it didn’t matter, none of it mattered, all that mattered was he was in control and driving. He pushed the accelerator lever up, and slowed to a manageable cruising speed.
Joe began laughing, laughing he didn’t know why, but laughing. Frances stopped waving her hat.
The rest of the day Wade drove the field. He shifted and steered, sped and braked, jousting with Sorry who lunged and feinted as he motored over the field, crushing worthless timothy, withered alfalfa, dead yellow clover. He churned up and down slopes overrun with dandelions, mashing the stems and strewing up seed puffs behind him. As the tractor sped so did his heart. His lungs swelled and thickened inhaling the fumes of billowing blue exhaust. He stood and drove; air swirled into his nose. He straddled the chassis and drove one-handed, waving his free hand like a bronc buster. Banging into a dry gulch, he was hurled off his feet and bounced back in the seat as the free-wheeling machine charged out like a tank on maneuvers.
He exulted, yelling out cries all lost to the wind, thinking, “If only Joe could see me now!”
Joe could see him now, Joe had seen it all, then hurried after Frances, seeing she had become crazy, confused, lost. He reached her stumbling back to the house, cursing that she couldn’t remember things, who was the damn kid on the tractor, whose house was she headed for, who was the asshole holding her arm.
The dogs sat up on alert, keeping their distance, as she wobbled into the yard, muttering that it didn’t matter, there was hay to stack, cattle to move, sheep to sheer, all of it for damn sure had to get done whether her mind was slipping or not. Damn em, damn all of em, year after year she took care a things while they all left and she stayed and for what? For never getting anything, not a damn thing, when the place should have gone to her, something should have, something should have made it worth working away her entire life over.
She stopped at the front steps. She couldn’t breathe. She trembled precariously, the dogs groveling at her feet, puzzled but—expecting to be thwacked—they scooted away quickly when her knees buckled and she toppled down.
She lay not knowing where or how long. A man, some man, appeared over her; a man she had to suffer lifting her and carrying her into some house. She cursed him with no lungs, no air, no sound, thinking she never needed em, not a man, not any of em. Never had. Never would.
Joe carried her to bed. She slept for hours. Joe sat in watch in her room, thinking. Joe sat in the kitchen in watch over Wade, thinking. He was still thinking the next morning when Wade offered to make breakfast. It took him two trips to carry it all, a plate of fried beef briskets covered with thick melting cream and scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, a pitcher of milk and a pan of coffee. “Is that going to be enough?” he asked, noticing Joe eyeing him funny.
“Yeah, Wade, more than enough.”
Joe started to eat, noticing how Wade’s pants wouldn’t quite button; he had improvised with a belt of old bailing twine. His fraying cuffs ended six inches above his ankles. His old t-shirt rode up his back and was ripped around his armpits. His toes stuck out of his shoes. His hair sprouted out in weed-like licks.
Joe pulled out several bills from the coffee can in the kitchen and laid them on the table.
“What’s that for?”
“You need a haircut.”
Wade stuck a forkful of food in his mouth. “Makes two ’ve us.”
“Yeah. So anyway, get to town. Have McCauley trim you up. Buy some clothes too.”
“What clothes?”
“All clothes. See how every damn thing’s been shrinkin on you?”
“Oh.” Wade tugged at his
shirt. “Maybe go now then?”
“You, not me. I don’t feel all that much like being in town.”
Wade set down his glass and pocketed the money. “How am I supposed to get there then?”
“Take the tractor. You drive it now. Right?”
“Really? You mean it? It’s legal?”
Joe shrugged but Wade didn’t wait for an answer. Forgetting all about breakfast, he was already on his way, and soon rattling up the lane.
JUST ABOVE BITTERROOT Gap, passing the vacated Burchard place, Wade saw a black sedan parked just off the road, and out in the adjacent field clustered around a black 4-wheel drive, a group of men; he recognized first Evan, then the two Japanese men who had been with him at the Grand, but not the small stumpy man with heavy black glasses. Evan was pointing his arm, sweeping it up and down the valley while the others listened and looked on.
Wade waved, unseen, and tractored on, reaching town at noon. He had visions of a flag-waving crowd on hand to welcome him which of course was not the case. In fact strangely the opposite: not a soul out on the street. He sauntered into the Mint, legs wobbly from the long drive, still half hoping for a fanfare; here again, no one, not even Marly. Squash clattering in the kitchen didn’t count. Back outside, he now noticed all the stores were closed; no way to buy clothes, he considered his next move.
He heard sounds and walked in their direction, toward, up to, and into the church. It was Sunday, he realized, and happy to see everyone, he joined the boisterous congregation.
Clearly Father Sterling had lost no time capitalizing on the success of his Graduation Week service. Overnight, communion had become a popular summer event, townspeople happily quenching their palettes on the plentiful ‘refreshments’, as he now called it, the reduction of gin and blood ‘wine’ and the ‘foie gras’ pâté, a mash of lamb liver donated by the town abattoir that Squash Maloney spiced up with lavender and wild mustard and served with his specialty fried barley dough ‘toasts’. In that vein, and as inducement to encourage more generous tithing, Father Sterling began stocking the contribution plates with cash before passing them down the pews. Initially a setback—he hadn’t counted on Meagherites making the logical assumption that, just as the communion was free, so too was the money in the plates, and would meekly then gratefully then fullfistedly help themselves to that as well— even this monetary loss turned profitable: By inadvertently helping congregants to ‘help themselves’, word spread, and the suddenly swelling attendance reports delighted the diocese, which began providing more and more support funding, more than making up for the monies lost priming the contribution plates. Father Sterling relished his success while humbly appreciating its temporal limitations, fully aware that this was, essentially, burning bridges at both ends. In fact, it all had a certain existential, if not perfectly Kierkegaardian, harmony.