Joe arched his eyes at her.
“What?” she said, “you got something better to do?”
He looked up, the plane again, whisking back upriver for another run.
“So. . .Joe? I’ll go saddle up then?”
“Yeah Wade, go saddle up then.”
Wade already striking out for the barn, keeping at bay the two canine cohorts, who immediately joined and jumped him.
“Frances’s dogs sure do love having him here for play dates, don’t they?”
Joe shook his head, the sun higher, hotter, making the wet turquoise dew recede, and desiccating the beads of moisture from blades of grass as they were exposed.
“I’m afraid Wade’s getting too attached.”
“Yeah, you should have heard him when I told him they changed the dam site. He’s all, like, now for sure you’ll find a way to keep it.”
“Anne, don’t go tellin him all. . .you go gettin his hopes all up an. . .it’s not good. For him.”
“He’s fine, you ol grouch. It’s just you it’s not good for.”
She swatted Joe, resisting doing more than that, then turned to watch Wade approach the sorrel, halter hidden behind his back, wagging a handful of wild wheat.
“Got awful lanky awful fast, didn’t he?”
“Awful fast.”
“Won’t be long till he’s as hot lookin as his dad.”
She tossed a clump of wet dirt at him.
“Why’d you come, Anne?”
“I missed you. That a problem for you now? You gonna tell me I’m getting too attached now too?”
Joe wiped his hands on his pants and stood up.
“We better go.”
WADE COULDN’T HOLD Sorry in step alongside the jeep. Hard as he reined her back, the headstrong filly battled ahead, and he was waiting at the gate to high pasture well before the pickup caught up. Anne got out, wanting a turn on the young horse. Dismounting, Wade stepped in prickly pear, and spent the time riding in the cab pulling out the cactus spears which had lanced his new sneakers.
Joe pulled up, cocked his head out the window, scanned the sky.
“Listen, Scotty. Hear that?”
Wade—wondering if he looked like Joe’s little brother, and that was why Joe called him Scotty—wished he had a picture, of himself and of Scotty, so he could compare and see for himself.
“You and Marly went in a plane like that, right Joe?”
“How’d you know that?”
“That picture Anne has. Of, you know, when you were kids. Right?”
Joe didn’t answer.
“I guess it was Scotty who took that picture. Was it?”
Wade thinking it had to be someone who liked Joe and Marly and who they liked too.
“No, it wasn’t him.”
“But he got to go up with you guys too? Didn’t he, Joe?”
“No, Wade.”
Joe started driving ahead again, following Anne.
“Scotty never made it.”
Then for a long time he didn’t answer any more of Wade’s questions. . .
. . .Endless, the land leading up to Independence, uninhabited, wild, empty, especially in a hurry, to get to Marly, and he passed the time tugging the mane of his horse, fretting out loud as though Scotty, beside him, was listening and understanding and liking all the new ideas Joe had had churning inside him, how he couldn’t wait to get out in the world, how he might never get another chance, how he couldn’t stand what little he knew about anything, how bad he wanted to know at least as much as Vaughn Marlowe knew. Since the day he had thought of it, Joe blazed with the notion, that they could go where Vaughn went, he and Marly, do what Vaughn did, learn what he learned. God what he wouldn’t give for that.
He hoped Vaughn would have returned now, and like last time, sit outside and talk like a know-it-all about the tropical climates that existed here millions and millions of years ago, thick rainforests of sycamore, redwood, breadfruit, magnolia, and mangrove, along shallow seas that got higher and then drowned those forests in layer after layer of sediment and how, between the pressure of the seas above and the hot earth below, they were hardened and transformed into vast basins of lignite and coal, then uplifted (there was so much Joe couldn’t possibly understand) so that, exposed by erosion, some of those fields caught fire in lightning storms, furious fires that lasted thousands of years, baking the underlying shale to brick-hard clinker, and kept uplifting so that mountains like Mount Contact were made, seafloor lifted so high that now you could find a rock like this, and Vaughn broke off a chunk of rust red rock he found and there were prehistoric, perfectly pressed carbons imprints of leaves fallen from those ancient forests into the swampy mud. He put the fossil rock to his nose and smelled and gave it to Joe, saying he was smelling aromas from millions of years ago. Joe’s legs had fallen asleep from not wanting to move, because Marly had her head in his lap; it was nice, the geology of Vaughn’s imagination and the sun floating down and Marly’s warmth and Scotty playing with his dog.
Since that last day, many more days had passed without seeing him, Vaughn Marlow, and Marly missed him, though she wouldn’t say so, and Joe knew, but wasn’t jealous, once he realized he missed him too and wouldn’t say so either, because he didn’t want to think he might have gone for good. But this time when Joe and Scotty rode up, Vaughn was there, laughing his laugh, even more when Joe jumped down and laughed his laugh too.
“You’re leaving, ain’t you?”
Vaughn leaned back. “Day after tomorrow, yep. But tomorrow itself, I’m flying. Arranged a twin engine to take me up, get the ten thousand foot view on things.”
His eyes gleamed with memory. “You see such things from a plane. It’s like God turns on a light for you.”
Joe looked at him, envious, and yet, it was good to have him back.
Marly looked almost in pain, from the desire she felt seeing Joe again, and from Vaughn’s being about to leave. She sat up.
“Last night, the funniest thing. I woke up, pots an pans all rattlin and the cabin creakin, I thought it was a grizzly, but when I got up, it was like somebody pulled the ground out from under me. I fell right over.”
“Yep,’ Vaughn said, “I felt it too, just before dark, I was at a fire lookout near the park, and the ranger there said he’s been calling these tremors all day long. Said they told him to stop, weren’t interested, told him it was just wind shaking his tower. Fools had any brains, they’d at least notify the seismology department at the university.”
“Why? It was an earthquake?”
“It was seismic something or other, I don’t care what those Forest Service paper-pushers said. There’s at least ten known faults all across Independence Basin, and probably others. It hasn’t been mapped except by the Emmons survey, and that was 1908.”
He stood up, clapped his hands, grinning.
“Too bad I can’t stay. I’d sure as hell hate to miss the big one.”
Joe toyed with his fingers. “Where you goin, anyway?”
“Alberta. There’s all that oil and pipeline work there, which is about the only thing that pays these days.” He stretched. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to spring a leak.”
He walked out into the nearby aspen thicket, and Joe followed, leaning against a tree while Vaughn relieved himself.
“Something on your mind there, kid?”
Joe shrugged ‘no’, and nodded ‘yes’, both at the same time.
“Shoot.”
“What if we went along with you? I mean, to Alberta? Tomorrow?”
“Go with me? Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, take us along, me and Marly.”
Vaughn Marlowe, incredulously, “Joe, you know I can’t. . .you’re not even. . .and still in school? I mean. . .”
“School? We don’t learn in school; I learn more from you in one afternoon. There’s nothin but nothin here for us. We’d work hard. We’d learn.”
Vaughn looked down, away, at Marly, at Joe, down again.
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“Joe, it’s a. . .an interesting idea, I understand how you feel, but it’s. . .I just can’t do that.”
But Joe, now that he’d got it out, couldn’t stop, give up, walk away.
“Just get us started, then. We got to get out in the world, Vaughn. There’s just no other way, we’re goin to go, one way or another, somewhere, out of here, we will. . .an all we hoped was if you could help make it easier for us.”
Vaughn Marlow shaking his head, rubbing his jaw, and, nothing more to say, watched as evening sunlight sharpened the summit edge of Mount Contact.
“And what’s so wrong with it anyway? Only reason I’m even here is some boy same age as me, even younger actually, my grandpa Meeks, run off from his own family an stowed away from back in Europe, an I don’t see why I can’t do the same, only in reverse.”
Vaughn put his foot on a fallen pine and took a long breath.
“First thing tomorrow morning, that plane I told you about, is landing at a field south of Meagher, to do a final reconnaissance, then it’s contracted to get me up to Alberta.”
His voice slow, even, quiet, but his eyes betraying him.
“Now, if. . .if. . .two young people were to happen to be there, and if there happens to be room enough for two more, and if the pilot happens not to say anything, well, who the hell am I to say anything. That’s the best I can do. Don’t count on any more than that. I can’t take that kind of responsibility.”
Vaughn, starting to walk off, turned back.
“Oh, and. . .you drive, right? Farm equipment, tractors, like that?”
“Sure I do. What about it?”
“I’m not saying one way or the other, but could be they’re hard up for equipment operators up there.”
He left, to his tent outside, where he turned in, and it grew night, and late, stars beginning to pop the thick ink of dusk. Scotty asleep in the cabin; Joe and Marly outside, talking it over, in low voices.
“You really mean it, Joe? Really do it. Run away?”
“Not run away, just go to where Vaughn’s goin. Yeah, Marly, I really want to. I got to. But I can’t go without you goin too.”
Marly, folded into a ball. Hands tremoring.
“So, just leave then. Just like that. Tomorrow, we just. . .you an me. Jesus, Joe. I can’t barely imagine.”
Joe nodding, “I know, yeah, but we got to, don’t we? What if we never get a chance like this, ever again?”
Marly turned, eyes big and uncertain and all over him, weakening Joe in his own certainty.
“Maybe I’m nuts; I don’t know what I’m talkin about. . .I. . .”
Marly reached her hand to his lips, smoothed them nervously, to console not him but herself, asking him, Did he really want her with him?
And he thought, of summer ending soon, of returning to town, to school, to chores.
To home.
Did he mean it?
“Yeah, Marly. What do we got to lose?”
And on it went. Joe didn’t get up and head home, he remained, hours into it, that hot night, its bowl of sky brilliant with stars. Sleeping, not sleeping, fretting, waking, Joe put his arms around Marly, her face with diamonds of dream sweat on it, and, eventually, he roused himself, waking her.
“Joe? What’s wrong?”
“We better go, Marly. Vaughn’s getting up. We don’t want to miss that plane. I’ll get Scotty.”
She held his arm.
“What?”
“Joe, we can’t.”
Joe not understanding.
“We can’t take Scotty with us. You know that, right?”
“No, course we can’t, I only meant to go get him to take him back. . .on our way to town.”
“But you know him; he won’t get it. He’ll want to go. He’ll be so. . .”
“We can’t just leave him. . .”
But no, he knew, they could leave him, and would; they had to, she was right, and it was obvious. That in leaving him, with no way to explain, no way to ever get him to understand, Scotty would follow them, no matter what they said, or did, he would, and Joe couldn’t face it, he knew that, Marly knew that. They would just have do it, have to leave, and go. Go without him. Better for him not to even know. Much better.
“He’ll just get home, maybe he won’t even know what. . .you never know what he knows and don’t know. He’ll get back all right. ”
“Yeah.” Marly nodding, wiping her eyes. “Yeah but. . .I’m goin to miss him. He’s the closest thing to a brother I ever had.”
“I know, but, we’re goin to make money, right, have work, and. . .first thing we’ll do? Come back and see him. Even bring him with us. Right?”
There wasn’t much to get together, and soon they quietly approached Loner, muzzling him with clumps of grass and slow soothing hands so he made no noise. They walked him through the ghostly buildings of Independence and up to the divide, where they stopped to get mounted. Marly turned to look one last time.
“Bein up here, havin you around, goddammit. It changed my life. Changed everything.”
“It’s only the beginning, Marl.”
“Long as you’re sure, I’m sure. You know that, right, Joe?”
And they found Vaughn Marlow, and joined him, and were on their way.
WHEN THEY LOCATED the two strays, Anne was still riding Sorry, driving them homeward ahead of her. A shadow swooped overhead, the motor whine of the plane, cutting into the heat of the day.
Wade’s head out the jeep’s window, watching the plane rise, descend, disappear again.
“Joe? You know that picture of you and Marly, the one of you guys, in front of the plane?”
Joe turned, having forgot Wade was there.
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Where were you guys going?”
“Where? Just taking a little plane ride, is all.”
Anne now and then having trouble keeping Sorry in check, when they reached the river, the sorrel was relentless, eager to run the two cows across. When they balked, Sorry reared, and Anne, wanting no part of that, yanked the reins back hard, The filly bristled, but obeyed, and—as though calmed being under the cool of river-lining cottonwoods—settled into an easy gait. Wade admired Anne, how she let herself sway with the rhythm of Sorry’s pace, keeping alongside the jeep.
Now and then the three would talk, or not, thinking their thoughts.
“Joe, do you know what free will is supposed to be?”
“Free what?”
Wade told them Father Sterling’s parable of the two travelers. “So if the horses know the way by heart, and the first man goes to sleep and lets his horse go on his own, but the second man steers his horse no matter what, how come it’s the second man that’s got free will?”
Anne, lazing back in the saddle, volunteered, “You ask me, the second guy is just a know-it-all. If anybody’s got free will it’s the horse.”
Joe, considering it, interested in it, said, “Might have something to do with how a person sees his life, maybe, like, how do you think of your life; do you lead it, or does it lead you? Are you just along for the ride, or do you try to take charge somehow. What do you think?”
Wade shrugged. “I think nobody ever cares what I think.”
“Huh?”
Wade blushed, and to cover his outburst, said, “I mean, like about me going off to some proper school, I just meant, well, everything is fine here just the way it is, and. . .but like, what difference does it make anyway? What I think? That’s all.”
At that, they all went silent again. The jeep, the horse, all stopped mid-river in the long shade of the cottonwoods, barely a ripple of river water lapping against the tires, more a trickle of foam and crud than a river. Moss baked on the hot white domes of the larger boulders.
“Awful damn low,” Anne said, and Joe said, “And not two months ago, it was a near flood.”
“It’s same as every year, two or three weeks of snowmelt and spring rain, then, bam, dry as a bone.”
&nb
sp; “Just when hayin season needs it.”
Sorry, aware Anne had let the reins go free, started off toward the far bank on her own, splashing the ankle deep water.
“Look at this one. Wade, your filly’s got more free will than any of us. Put together.”
Overhead, the white plane had cut its engine, and as it was gliding silently over them, Anne waved. The pilot, in response, dipped the wings.
“Hey,” Anne cried, “that’s Norman.” She flailed her arms again. “I bet he’s started that job. Surveyin how they plan to feed all that water to the liquid fuel plant they’re buildin.”
The plane’s engine roared, it sped away, a hand flash behind the small cockpit windows waved. Joe watching Anne, waving back, laughing, happy. A momentary bolt of hope crackled within him.
LATE, MIDDLE OF the night, Frances in her room, Wade in Emma’s old room, Joe on a cot in the front room. Again, a night of the usual tossing and turning, though this night with moonlight glimmer filling the window.
A tail swished his face, he rolled over. A wet nose touched his ear, he batted it away. A weight settled on the end of his cot.
“Damn you. How’d you get inside?”
Butter, one of Frances’s dogs. He thrashed at him with his foot; Butter jumped down. Joe settled back down.
“Joe?”
Now a hand, rocking his leg.
“Joe?”
Anne, now sitting where Butter just left.
Joe’s head went bolt upright.
“Jesus. Anne? What d’you think you’re doing here?”
“Oh, great, thanks a lot. I want to be with you, what’s it look like.”
“But you can’t. . .you can’t just. . .”
Joe skootched back as she stood suddenly. The cot flipped up, and over, landing Joe in a heap.
“Ow!” he swore, untangling, getting to his feet, pulling his blanket over his underwear.
Lowering his voice, he asked, again, What was she doing here?
Anne raised a bottle—wine—took a long drink. Its strong fumes wavered the moonlight.
“I just told you.”
She offered it to him, he waved it away. Righted the cot. Rubbed his eyes.
“What time is it?”
“Time for you to stop bein a wimp, pretendin you don’t care about me, an. . .”
“Jeez, Anne, lower your voice, you’re wakin up the whole valley.”
“Fine,” she retorted, and plopped in a huff on the floor. Joe sat carefully positioning himself in the dark, back on the cot.