Bronc riding started terribly. The set of young geldings, more interested in eating than bronco-ing, couldn’t be bothered; the minute the chute opened, they stupidly poked a head out and lay down. Riders leapt off, kicking and cussing, but with no result. After several successive disappointments, a hand from the Tyler outfit strategically mixed locoweed into their oats, bringing about a much more desirable result, and now when the chute flung open, the horse spun out, hallucinating wildly, and when the unsuspecting rider dug his spurs into its flanks, his horse, as though struck by a jolt of lightning, arced ten feet in the air, hurling the rider another ten feet above that. Thereafter, bronc riding was an acclaimed success.
Calf roping had mixed results. On several occasions, a horse, racing after the quixotic scamper of its smaller prey, would cut sharply and reverse direction, leaving its rider midair, more than one ending up landing headlong among the drunken scrambling onlookers. One cowboy, throwing his lasso with great flair, accidently snared a spectator who was then treated to a whirlwind manure-softened drag around the arena before the stampeding horse could be reined to a halt.
In bull riding, one notably egregious performance was given by a champion-sized Hereford which thundered straight out of the chute to a young woman sitting on the pickup hood with that weekend’s boyfriend. The bull then did nothing but beller and stomp and paw the dirt before her, his solid muscle all but shaking several pounds from its rider’s already skinny frame. The young woman on the hood, a ravishing blonde, was uncertain whether to be flattered or indignant, and nudged her passed-out boyfriend for an explanation. “Jinx,” she said, “is that a male or female cow?” Rousing himself, Jinx Conner took one look at the bull’s lower quarters, its long and mighty pink needle dripping with white fluids, quivering in and out of its sheath, and yanked her off the hood and ran off back to town. The overstimulated beast then tore into a rampage around the arena, throwing his startled rider off like a leaf. The bull was rewarded with thunderous applause, which the cowboy mistook for himself. He took several deep bows before being shouted from the arena.
EVAN GALLANTINE SKIPPED the rodeoing; he now had little desire to be among people. Shortly after noon, finding Marly alone behind her bar, he asked her on a walk. They went nowhere in particular. Meandering. It was hot, the air thick with heavy pungent ripening hay, and quiet, but for the buzz of grasshoppers and an occasional melody of the meadowlarks.
Evan picked some wild bitterroot and fashioned it into a bouquet.
“Marly, the way you look lately,” he said, handing her the flowers, “you won’t be able to fend off all these new bachelors in town much longer.”
“We’ll see about that.” She put the flowers behind her ear. “You look a bit down in the mouth yourself.”
“Long in the tooth maybe.”
He was unshaven, wearing yesterday’s shirt, his hair a tangle of gray streaks and blond flips.
Marly stopped and turned. “So?”
“So. . .” Evan inhaled. “So now that this is over, I should be relieved. . .”
“So, are you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been thinking, but. . .I feel rusty in that regard.”
“Oh boy. Lots of that goin around.”
She sighed. A breeze rustled her hair, she pushed up a loose spray, the flower bouquet fell out of her hair.
She picked it up and their walk resumed.
“What are you thinking then?”
“I don’t know. What I’m trying to think is, what was ever I doing here? I thought I was here to make the perfect deal. But, why? So I can walk away swell-headed, how I had everyone’s best interest at heart, doling out profits and a few hopes? So. . .am I really just kidding myself? That I’m so different than Joe. . .or any of us? When it comes to half-baked, self-important fantasies, no; I’m every bit a Meeks as the rest. It’s really like. . .what is it with this family? And, for that matter, is it even really a family?”
Marly turned her face into a cooling gust of air. The afternoon was summer warm, although high up the valley there were storm clouds suggesting winter was far away but not that far. She looped her arm in his.
“Evan, far’s I’m concerned, you only did one thing wrong. But I can’t ever forgive you for it.”
He stopped. He thought. He smiled.
“I brought Joe back?”
“Oh, worse. You made him go away.”
Evan pulled his arm around her waist.
“Ah Marly, there’s only one thing to know about Joe. You never know what the hell he’s going to do.”
THAT SAME DAY, the whole day, Anne kept to her room. With Joe flying out soon and forever, and not with her, she was avoiding everyone. She went out once, down to the bar, to fetch the nearest bottle that wasn’t full of something sweet or fancy or green, and returned. That—drinking alone in her room—made her feel better.
Later in the day, her eyes fluttered open. Almost dark. Her mother at her door. Just like her, to come stand wait. . .and not say a goddamn word.
“S’pose you can hardly wait to throw in your two cents.”
Marly holding a small picture frame prominently sitting on the dresser. In it, the photograph of her, and Joe, and the plane in the background.
“You got the picture back, I see.”
Anne saying nothing, Marly folded her arms and leaned her head against the door jamb.
“Why’re you here, Anne?”
“What d’you mean? Where else am I s’posed to be?”
“Not here. You’re movin out. Ain’t that what you told me?”
“Yeah I did, but. . .never mind. I ain’t. You happy now?”
“You can’t stay here, Anne.”
“What?” Bourbon backed up in Anne’s nose. “You been saying how much you needed me here. To help out. To. . .”
“I know. But I’ll be fine. I’m a big girl now.”
“Just like that, now you don’t need me all of a sudden.”
“I was wrong. You were right. An you should go, wherever it is you’re goin.”
“Goddamn, mom, what’d you want from me? What am I s’posed to say? ‘I’m sorry’? All right, fine. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“For. . .what d’you mean for what? I don’t know. Everything I’m s’posed to be sorry for. I get it. I’m sorry. Can’t you just leave me alone an have a little sympathy about it?”
Marly came to the bed, sat with hands tucked between her knees.
“Anne, I mean it. You don’t belong here now.”
“But you. . .what about all your big plans?”
“Oh I still got my plans. And you got your own. And. . .they’re just very differnt.”
“Dammit, Mom, you’re makin me. . .” Anne pulled the hair from her eyes. “Why’re you doin this? It’s ‘cause of me and Joe, ain’t it? Well you can stop. . .”
“It’s got nothin to do with that.”
Anne started to tear up.
“Okay, I know how awful I was. I didn’t mean those things I said, I never should of. . .”
Marly reached to wipe an eye, then the other, then took her daughter’s hand.
“No, Annie, I’m the one sayin ‘I’m sorry’.” Marly looked away. “I knew better. I knew day one I saw Joe back. When things started goin off in my head, how now everything’d be so perfect, how we’d be just, well, happy again, how we’d just pick up from before, just like that. But see, tellin myself all that? I knew better. If from nothin else than from how it got me so goddamn scared.”
“Scared?”
“Yeah scared. How I got to thinkin how I needed Joe for it to happen. An needin Joe for somethin? That’s damn scary just that alone. An. . .goddamn how I felt myself startin to go crazy—and not sure why—wakin every mornin feelin just plain at a loss. Here a whole world of opportunities are comin my way, but the more they did, the more I felt like I was bein thrown into somethin I didn’t want. A bottomless pit. The day I come across that damn photo you always loved, but
in his room? Rememberin that day, Joe an me, us laughin an happy an runnin away to a new life. . .God, it near killed me. You know why? ‘Cause now, lookin at it, I seen what I couldn’t before. What I had let die in myself. What I lost.”
She wiped her own eyes now. Reached to pick up the framed photo on the dresser, fingered it, her young smiling face, next to Joe Meeks’ young smiling face.
“And I don’t mean just the good sex.”
“You mean it was?”
“Well, yeah, honey. It sure was that.”
She smoothed Anne’s hair.
“Oh my. That summer. Me an Joe. Like for the first time ever I felt how I could have a life. A better one. One so big and wild an right there in front of us you could touch it, and, I tell you, I never felt that before. Not anything like it. I was excited, all right. . .but Anne? We had so much between us and even so. . .goddamn I was so scared. I can’t even tell you how scared. An I just don’t like feelin scared. I don’t, I hate it. To even dare think I might. . .”
“But why didn’t you? What happened?”
“You know damn well what happened.”
“He left an you didn’t. But. . .I don’t get why?”
“He felt to blame of course. Who wouldn’t? I know I did. Felt to blame too, I mean. I figured he blamed me too. I thought he’d get over it. I thought he’d come back. I thought that for a long long time. Even after you came along, I was sure. I wanted it too much, honey; once you want somethin that much, you don’t want to ever give it up. Once you finally do, let me tell you, you don’t never want to let it happen again.”
Anne leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder.
Marly held out the back of her hands; picked at a chip in her nail polish.
“Must be awful strange, your own mother, talkin this way, sorry poor old flesh and blood silly human being if there ever was one.”
“I’m sorry, mom. Really sorry.”
“Ah no, forget that. I’m the one who’s sorry. For you.”
“For me? For what?”
“For bein a mother who decided what growin up means is learnin not to ever want what you really want. It wasn’t that surveyin job or how you thought you were in love with Joe. Oh I knew better’n that. It was seein you want somethin that I gave up on. What I didn’t want to see was, I was doin to you exactly what I done to myself. So I didn’t. Until now. Maybe that’s what scared me.”
She ran her fingers through Anne’s hair.
“You know, there’s times I just can’t believe anything as alive as you ever come from me.”
Anne put her face in her mother’s neck. “It’s goin to be so nice here though. Real soon. I can tell.”
“Well, who can ever know?”
“We can’t give up on it.”
“Never mind we. You go on and go after it, whatever it is you’re after. Don’t give up on it. That’s why I want you out, Anne. Okay?”
Anne nodded.
“Just one thing.”
“What?”
“Stay away from Squash. Him I can’t do without.”
Anne grinned.
“Oh, that’ll be a bitch, mom, but I’ll really really try. I promise”
They sat very still, breathing as one. Marly stood to go. Then sighed and reached out her arm.
“Oh hell. Just let me have a hit on your bottle there, before I go.”
JUST DAWN. JOE alone, waiting for Norman at the airstrip outside Meagher. Standing alongside the dark twin-engine propeller plane resting on the near end of a long grassy runway that stretched west for a good length of the benchland. Down in the still dark Hellwater flood plain, under the early light, croplands shimmered like an arctic front had swept down and glazed them mercury blue. Other than the crimson line of dawn streaking the east, the extremities of sky were luminous dusty black from the summer’s forest fires hundreds of miles to the west. What little remained of the aurora borealis, its faint diaphanous green orange curtains, waned in the north. . .
. . .A similar sky. . .Joe with Marly, hurrying to the rendezvous with Vaughn Marlowe and the flight to Alberta, tense, quiet, driving Harlo’s old Chevy that they had furtively push-started, undetected, from the driveway onto the road, and now had it racing toward the air strip.
The car suddenly jolted.
Joe swerved, regaining control just before it flew off the road.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know.” Joe flashed his eyes in the rear view then back on the road, wheeling ahead. “Nothing, I guess. Strange though.”
Marly looking unconvinced, he grinned.
“It’s okay, Marle. Take a last look around; all this’s behind us now. Ready for what all lays ahead?”
Calmed by his smile, she turned her eyes front, nodding.
Dawn-light stratified the sky as the bluff with the airstrip came in sight. But again, without warning, the car lurched to the side, jumped the edge, leaving the ground, spinning laterally in the air, into the burrow pit traveling backwards. Joe wrestled it to a stop.
“Be careful, Joe.”
“I didn’t do anything. It just. . .Jesus did you see that? Like we were flyin.”
“What happened? Is the steering broke?”
“I don’t know. Let me see what’s goin on.”
Just as he got out, the ground heaved sideways, hurling Marly against the door, and tossing Joe flat on his back. For only several seconds, the earth gyrated, then stopped as abruptly as it began. Joe leapt back in the car.
“We got to get to Vaughn, quick!”
He spun the car around, and banged back up onto the road. At the airstrip, Vaughn Marlowe charged out to them, his face blazing, a camera swinging around his neck.
“Thank Christ you’re early! Come on!”
“What’s goin on?” Marly yelled. “Is it an earthquake?”
“You better believe it is! One hell of an earthquake, and it’s all ours!”
They ran to the plane, rocking on its wheels, propeller spinning madly, whipping air into their faces.
“Get in,” Vaughn shouted.
“Wait!”
“What?”
Joe grabbed Marly. “Take our picture.”
Vaughn hesitated only a second. “No, we don’t have. . .oh all right, just hurry the hell up!”
He unshouldered his camera. In the viewfinder, Joe, holding Marly tight, her hair flying, both laughing, wind from the roaring propeller driving tears from their eyes. Behind them, the first sprays of sun tinging the morning clouds pink and splashing their face. As Vaughn snapped the shutter, Joe inhaled, sucking air, like breathing for the first time.
“Marly, we’re really goin, aren’t we?”
“Together!”
“And it’s only the beginning.”
“Get in” Vaughn yelled, “Time’s wasting.”
“Joe, say you love me!”
“I love you, Marly, I can’t believe how much I do.”
“No, Joe, say it like you really mean it.”
Laughing. Hearts racing.
A FEW WEEKS later, an envelope, from Alberta, from Vaughn Marlowe, arrived for Marly, the developed photograph and a short note, about that day, the greatest day of his life. Give regards to Joe, it said at the end, but Joe, already long gone, was never to see it.
WITH DAYLIGHT CAME Norman’s vehicle up the road pulling up next to the plane.
“Bright and early,” Norman said, shaking Joe’s hand, “Good to see you. Give me a few minutes to check things out here, and we’ll be all set.”
To Joe, eager to get airborne, the few minutes seemed an hour that Norman monkeyed with the plane.
“You were smart, learning to fly.”
“Comes in dang handy, tell you that.”
“So, bout finished up?”
“Yeah, that should about do it.”
“Guess we may’s well go then?”
“Sure.” Norman rested his foot on the wheel. “Soon as they get here.”
“The
y?”
“Fact, that must be them here now.”
Joe turned. Another vehicle, a dust-caked chalk red pickup plowing up the hillside, jerked to a stop. Wade popped out one side, Anne Croft the other.
“You didn’t. . .they’re comin with us?” Joe exclaimed.
“Why not? Just as I was finishing breakfast, I was talking with Anne, and she mentioned how much you had wanted to take Wade up along with. . .heck, the plane seats four; no problem at all. So what d’you say, let’s go. Wade, you first.”
As Wade climbed in, Anne stuck her smiling face in Joe’s. “So thoughtful of you, Joe,” she whispered as she climbed in behind.
Once airborne, Norman turned and yelled, “All right, folks, anywhere you want to go, just say the word. I only have a few flight strips left to do, so this run, I’m all yours.”
“How about Independence?” Wade shouted. “And over that landslide and past Mount Contact?”
“Easy peasy. Independence it is. Heck of a sight from the air, for dang sure.”
The plane banked south and they were on their way, quiet but for the drone of the aircraft zipping over tawny summer grassland.
“What’s all this?”
Anne leaned forward, indicating the equipment between the seats.
“Aerial photogrammetry. Use it to get estimates for right-of-way costs on them water canals.”
“Oh. But then. . .what about regular surveyin?”
“Start terrain surveys any day, since the new site got prelim approvals.” Norman smiled wryly. “Means a lot of work for me.”
“What about me?”
“Well I don’t know.” Norman scratched his chin, perfectly serious. “What I need right quick is a photographic interpreter, someone who’d wanna take on some fast learnin up on aerial displacement formulas.”
He winked at Joe. Anne sat back.
“Be careful, your face might break,” Joe yelled. Anne jabbed an elbow at him; Joe flinched.
“You okay there?”
“It’s just a spasm; he gets em sometimes,” Anne called back. “Right, Joe?”
Joe turned his attention out the window.
The canyon of Bitterroot Gap flashed below. Norman nosed the plane higher in order to crest the upper ridges. The engines roared, and all at once they sailed out over the upper valley, glowing like a hot lake of dry range. . .recalling another flight over the same valley. . .