“Anything’s fine.”
She pulled a glass from a sink of suds, burdened it with straight whiskey and set it in front of him. He rubbed his finger slowly circling the rim. Making a lonely hum. Reminding Marly of the touches of that same fingertip.
“You’re lookin none the worse for wear,” she said.
“Still the same. Hair’s longer, maybe.”
“It is. But somethin’s differnt. Not sure what though.”
She took the stool next to him.
Joe laced his fingers together.
“So. . .I hoped to talk. If you’re done usin me for a dartboard, that is.”
“Sure, I can bite my tongue, ain’t all that much venom left in it. What’d you want to talk about?”
“It’s that damn ranch. How I still can’t get straight if I want it or not.”
“Joe, c’mon. It’s kind of a bit late for that now.”
“Yeah, maybe so, but. . .just s’pose the dam didn’t go through. Like, say someone had a way to stop it.”
“S’pose they did.”
“Then, it falls through, obviously. Everything falls through, pretty much, and then, what do you know. I still got the ranch on my hands.”
Marly noticed her image in the moist sheen of the bartop; she wiped it away.
“Guess I was wrong. This ain’t just an idle chat bout old times an what mighta been.”
He nodded, studying his glass like a crystal ball. After a while, he looked up.
“You ever wonder. . .whether if someone ever does get a chance to pick up where he left off, could he?”
“What’s it matter to you what I wonder, Joe?”
“Just s’pose it does. Matter. What d’you think?”
Marly pulled her hair back, running it through her hands, heavy and darker red from being unwashed.
“Might be a man could. If it’s you—the one doin the pickin up where he left off—I don’t know, Joe. Where would that leave Wade?”
“Wade? What’s he got to do with it?”
“Seems like bout everything, to me. How’s a guy s’posed to pick up where he left off, if he lives life like everyone he ever gets close to is just goin to turn into another Scotty?”
Joe swung his head around, glaring at her, but decided not to share the thought and turned away and while he sat thinking about it, she sat thinking about it, then put her hand on his arm.
“Wade and Scotty, Joe? It’s a big difference. Just so happens Wade’s still alive.”
Behind them, just then, a vanguard of the muddy crowd on its way from the rodeo began to throng in.
“Feel like getting a little wet?” she said.
THE OVERCAST SO low, the lane to the cemetery had barely enough light to see. They stood under dripping poplars, listening to the quiet hiss of rain.
“Where’s Wade, anyway?” Marly asked.
“Up spending his last day at the ranch.”
“He’s leavin tomorrow?”
Joe nodded. “Got him in a school with a summer program. He’ll be late but only a little. ”
Marly nodded. “And then what about you? Where you off to? As far from here as possible, I expect?”
He didn’t answer. His thoughts unclear, she fell silent. Then not.
“Not that it makes any difference, Joe, but. . .I was kinda hopin you wouldn’t. Take off. Not right away.”
She reached to wipe trickles from his forehead. He looked down.
“Well, never mind.”
She took his arm, started walking again.
“So what was that you were sayin, bout stoppin the dam?”
“Yeah. That was. . .it’s nothin. Just me bein. . .me.”
“You know somethin though. There’s a problem with somethin. Somewhere. I see it in your eyes, plain as this rain.”
He ran his hands through his hair, long enough to slick back now when it was wet.
“It won’t matter. It’s not my problem. Not once I get that check in my hands.”
“That don’t quite ring true, Joe. You don’t need the money, not that bad.”
“Wade needs it.”
“Wade? Why him?”
“That way at least he’s got a chance.”
“Chance of what?”
“I don’t know.” Joe shook his head. “I’m done talkin about it; there’s really nothin more to say.”
“About all that, yeah, it might be. But seems to me there’s still somethin to talk about. . .and I’d guess you know what about just as well as me. Ain’t that why you came by in the first place?”
Joe looked at her, puzzled.
“What happened that day, Joe?”
“What happened? What day?“
“The day you left.”
Joe wiped the wet from his hands; they glistened of being newly cleansed.
“You know what happened, Marly. What do you think? I couldn’t have very well. . .”
“Have what? Run off with me like we planned?”
“Well how could I? My own brother dead and I caused it? Could you have?”
“Course not. I never could of done that, not then, not after. . .but you did. You did it anyways, goddamn you, Joe. Without me. And why? I could never understand. How could. . .”
They had stopped, facing one another. Joe stooped, picked up a rock, raised his arm to throw it. But didn’t.
“I can’t see what difference it makes anymore.”
“Well none, I guess. If you can’t see, you can’t see. Forget it. Like you said, what difference can it make?”
Joe looked at her, not sure if the wetness on her face was all rain. And whether it was or not, he saw how it made her face shine.
“I just always wished I knew why,” she finally said. “Only ‘cause I mighta been able to let it go. That’s all, Joe.”
He lowered his arm. Dropped the rock. Rocked his boots into the mud a long time before he began to talk. . .
. . .The phone ringing, yet again, but no one answering, yet again. They all knew it could only be one person.
When it stopped, silence again, loud, louder than ever. None of them, Harlo, Leonard, Frances; no one telling Joe what had happened to Scotty. And they knew, he knew they knew, and he hated that they wouldn’t just say it. But they wouldn’t. They just picked at their dinner, sawed their liver, stabbed their potatoes. Scotty’s chair empty, his dog underneath, curled up, tail thumping rhythmically. Through it all, Emma grinning her simple-minded grin. Like nothing had happened. For her, nothing had.
The phone ringing again. The sound like a sword in his brain.
His dad put down his knife and fork and closed his hands into fists.
“You might tell that gal of yours there’s been a death here so she’ll quit her damn callin.”
So this time Joe reached for the phone.
“Joe?”
Marly in his ear, her voice urgent; scared.
“Yeah?”
“Oh god, Joe. How is it? How are you?”
“All right.”
“You want me to do anything? You want me to be with you?”
“No. It’s okay.”
“I don’t know what to do. I feel so terrible. I. . .”
Joe staring outside, a deer Harlo had killed, its carcass hanging from the eaves of the tool shed.
“Joe, say somethin, can’t you? What’s wrong? Are they all listenin?”
“Yeah. I gotta get goin.”
“Wait, Joe, just. . .maybe you can get to town later? We’ll figure somethin out. Okay? Joe?”
“Yeah okay.”
He pressed the receiver into his ear even as he hung up. Silence returned; utter resounding silence. At a loss what to say, he said, “I wish Scotty was here instead of me.”
His dad scraped his chair back.
“Maybe if you’d of stayed put ‘stead of always runnin off tail waggin up to Independence for that half-baked Croft girl, he would be.”
Leonard rose and stalked into the kitchen.
“Poo
r little son of a bitch,” Harlo said, the first thing he’d said all evening.
Frances wiped her sleeve across her mouth to remove a trickle of liver blood.
“You figured on runnin off with that girl then?”
Joe shot her a look, wondering what she knew, but she ignored it if she even noticed.
“Might as well get on and do it, then. Can’t go on all worryin about it. People die, you don’t, you go on.”
Leonard returned with a beer. Sat down. Said nothing.
“Lucky your dad didn’t die with him,” Frances continued.
“What d’you mean?”
“Once I seen you and that gal stealin off in Harlo’s car this morning, I thought, the hell with you. But with Scotty not in bed and his horse still out, I knew I better send your dad up to have a look.”
“You went back up to Independence?”
Leonard leaned back, laced his hands behind his head.
“Got just about there when all of a sudden it hit,” he said. “Trees swayin and the ground shakin like mad. Bout the same time, there comes Scotty’s dog scamperin toward me. No Scotty though; nowheres in sight. There was a lull, and me and the dog kept goin, that’s when I found him.”
Harlo shook his head. “I don’t see why Joe’s got to hear all that.”
“He don’t got to,” Frances said, “but he might want to know.”
“What happened?” Joe burst out.
“He’d been headin down, I guess once he seen you two’d left him. Must have been when the quake hit, a big chunk of boulder size of a car broke loose. Somehow it knocked him from his horse an pinned him to the ground. Crushed in his chest. Time I got to him, he couldn’t barely breathe. He wasn’t gonna make it, that was clear. Poor little fella. Scared shit. I seen in his eyes he knew it, too.”
“But. . .so you just left. . .”
“Goddamn, Joe, I’m sorry it wasn’t you there so you could’a moved that boulder all by yourself an pulled him on out, then brung him. . .but no, you’d run off by then I guess.”
Leonard sipped his beer.
“I did hear this plane somewhere above but no way to signal it, so what choice I had was just get back down quick for help. . .I’d just got up to the divide when all holy hell broke loose. Goddamn it was like a thousand freight trains. Ground just plain rose out from under me, and the wind whipped me clean off my feet. Air got blacker’n midnight. And the dirt? Never seen anything like it. I thought I was bein buried alive.”
For the first time ever, Joe saw tears fill his dad’s eyes.
“Turns out Scotty was.”
Joe’s tongue soured. He gagged. He fixed his eyes on the plastic gingham table, the plaid patterning on his eyes, dizzying.
After a long silence, the longest yet, Frances leaned back.
“Years ago, this bad red fever was goin around hereabouts. I was just a girl, I remember it bein winter and I was out choppin ice from the pump, with that Hellwater wind whistlin through my bones just about as cold as cold could ever be. All of a sudden I got just plumb weak, all swoozy and swayin so bad I had to put down the ax like a cane to hold myself steady. I seen my hands, near to all blue. I went to blow on em an all of a sudden I pitched forward right onto the ice. Next thing I know I’m shakin in mother’s bed, sweat freezin on my forehead, eyes rollin back an forth, heart knockin against my ribs. I never really knew how long, but it was a long while I was out, wakin up delirious, dyin of thirst, moanin and talkin to myself. Somewhere in all that, I remember: there was this loud trompin woke me up. The door’d creaked open, a blast of wind shakin the place near to pieces, and this. . .shape. . .this somethin. . .big an dark. . .comes in. It’s got on a dirty ol hat an sheepskin coat. An that’s it. Next thing I know it’s mornin and mother’s shakin my leg, wantin to know why I was still in bed with no chores done.
“An I sat up. An I tell you, I felt like, who am I to be layin sick, givin mother even more to do, when it wasn’t one time at all in her life she wasn’t out there workin, day in day out, just to keep us all goin. I tell you, Joe; a fierceness took grip in me then. I got up, walked out back, pumped me some water, drank my fill and got back to doin my chores. I broke that fever, broke it for good, an from that day I never had another day sick in my life.”
She leaned back and kicked Scotty’s dog out from under the table.
“Don’t ever give in, not for nothin. That’s just how you survive. You don’t ever learn that, you can’t ever expect to live much of a life.”
NOW AND THEN, the rain letting up, the cemetery glowed with its luminous after-mist.
“I sat at that table, each person there like a mirror of myself, of what it meant to be a Meeks. And I knew right then I wouldn’t wish that, ever, on anyone. Includin you, Marly. Especially you. Next day I was gone for good. I should’ve stayed that way. An never come back.”
Joe fell silent a while, pushing back the images, despite their long reach, to what was the far past.
“I did learn one thing, for all that.”
“Just one?”
Joe laughed.
“Oh don’t mind me and my bad jokin. What was it?”
“That. . .the fact is, Marly? I never did leave. Not really; I left town, but I just kept myself in the very place I tried to get away from.”
“No, you can’t say that. It’s a lot more. . .”
“It doesn’t have to be the same for Wade, though. It’s not written out anywhere. The one thing he for sure doesn’t need is to ever be a Meeks like me. An that’s why I won’t let myself get any more involved. I don’t need that money, but he does.”
Marly shook her head.
“No, you got it backwards, Joe. What Wade needs is for you to be the person he needs you to be.”
Joe shook his head, almost violently, but didn’t speak.
“Believe me, I know. Once you got a child, the way you love thinkin oh so poorly of yourself. . .from then on it’s a luxury you can’t afford. Otherwise, they turn out just as coldhearted and given up as you. As us. No matter how good a school you send em to, you can’t pretend to be surprised.”
Joe’s face was dark, whether from the low light, or not, she couldn’t tell. But still, he didn’t speak.
“You already got one child on your conscience, Joe. That’s not enough for you?”
Mist beaded on his face. Like wet on cold white marble. Then. . .
He sighed. And hung his head.
Marly took his hand. When he looked up, seeing her smile, the hard marble glaze dissolved.
“You can’t allow that dam to go through just to get the money. That kind of money won’t pay for savin Wade. It’ll pay for abandonin him.”
He lifted his shirt trail, dried his face. She realized, she still had his hands in hers. He was idly soothing her fingers. And she was his.
MUSIC FROM THE jukebox resounded throughout the Mint. Clusters of young kids outside listening at the windows while adults crowded the booths. The throng reached clear through to the lobby.
Joe bulled his way through, scanning the faces, pushing ahead. People drank his health; he kept moving.
“Too much of a rush for a quick one?”
Harlo behind him, offering him a drink. Joe shook his head, but Harlo insisted.
“Piss poor rodeo, wasn’t it? Used to ride better myself.”
“You did?”
Joe continuing to move through the people, Harlo trailing along.
“Hell yeah. Guess it wasn’t much after you run off, I hit the bull ridin circuit for a time. Never won nothin, ‘cept for this particular limp I got.”
Joe searching the crowd, half listening.
“Yeah, Wolf Point, was where that was; they let any poor asshole have a go up there. I was hardly out of the chute and that bull got him a hoof right here where she lives. Cracked my pelvis three places, mashed all hell outta my groin. Ended more’n my rodeo ridin days, believe you me.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yep. In more way
s’n one. Anne’s as close as I’ll ever get to havin a kid.”
“What?” Joe stopped short. “What do you mean, Anne?”
“What d’you mean, what d’you mean? Hell, Joe, you’d be the only one in the state if you don’t know that.”
“Jesus, Harlo; know what? You sayin you’re the father?”
Harlo grinned.
“Well, there’s a little more to it than that. After that final rodeo injury, I come back here to lay up a while. Marly was around, and she sure was a different gal than that wild girl I’d known before. We started seein each other; kind of to help patch each other up, I guess. By then she was takin things over at the Grand, not doin too bad, and she had some flings now and then, gettin over you. Anne come along, and well, Marly kind of wanted to keep her. Then after she got clear you wasn’t about to ever come back, she figured I’d maybe stick around and play papa. An I did for a while, but it wasn’t my kind of situation in the long run.”
“What are you saying? Anne’s your daughter or not?”
“I sure’s hell don’t see how she could of been my actual daughter. I couldn’t of even sired a ball of spit after that bull ridin injury. But I seemed to be the only one who knew. Town folks all just assumed, and pretty soon even Marly did too. I swear, women have a peculiar way they can both see things the way they are and the way they want em to be, and it don’t make no difference to em. I don’t know, I figured let people think whatever the hell they want.”
“If you aren’t her father, who is?”
“Hell if I know who. I half think maybe she just spawned herself.”
“Doesn’t Marly know?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Far as I can tell, Anne could be most anybody’s, Joe. What them hippies call a love child, I guess.”
Joe shook his head. He felt dizzy, the bar whirling with dancing couples, dark hats bobbing and loose long hair swirling. Outside on the oily new blacktop, the overflow were dancing too.
“Hey, lookit here. Now it’s an official Meeks’ family reunion.”
Evan Gallantine, clearly obviously pleasantly drunk. And before he could say anything, Ruth Loomis, a shit-eating grin on her face, drew up to him, dropped her cigarette to the floor, pulled off her baggy knit sweater, gathered her white streaked hair with a handkerchief, and reached her arm round Evan’s waist. He was dancing with her before he could even beg their pardon. While, at the same time, Jack Loomis came up, happy, cheery, wanting to shake Joe’s hand.
“Mr. Meeks! You’re looking awfully proud.”