* * * *
Wyatt had found himself baffled by how marriage had transformed his life. He’d quit pounding nails, hired a crew and advertised himself as a contractor. Simms became “that goddamn buddy of yours.” Dawnell took a job in town, worked late keeping Wyatt’s books.
When the time had come for Dawnell to deliver Amy, she cramped and cursed for 16 hours. Wyatt held the baby first, marveling at her downy lightness, the way her gray skin filled with pink before his eyes. “That’s it for me,” Dawnell groaned. “You’re doing the next one.”
At Dawnell’s insistence, he had a vasectomy. A year later, in the throes of intimacy, he agreed to have it reversed. On the evening after the second operation, alone in the bathroom, he dabbed at his twice-bruised scrotum with a chilling washcloth and taped gauze alongside each testicle. He hobbled to the bedside, rolled in gingerly, and rested his head in his hand, tracing the curve of Dawnell’s hip with his fingertips. Even in sleep, she recoiled from his touch.
In time, Wyatt learned to cook and clean with inept fervor, changed messy diapers, memorized toddler doggerel featuring brown bears and velveteen rabbits. But after Simms left town to find work, Wyatt’s drinking hit high gear. He held boozy poker games in the work shed with Dawnell’s brother Coyd and anyone else who’d show up. An all-night game brought an end to that. Sneaking into the house, he crunched a wooden flute under his heel. Dawnell, who’d given it to Amy as a present, spat curses. Amy howled until Wyatt promised her he’d buy her anything, anything she wanted. The bawling stopped. She pulled tiny fists from her eyes and smiled.
“I want waffles,” she said. They’d laughed then and eaten waffles together at the kitchen table, winter closing in, steam fogging the windows.
With the card games banished, Wyatt began drinking alone in the work shed. Coyd, who had joined the sheriff’s department, nearly lost his job for driving him home unticketed after a minor crash. After Dawnell insisted that he dry out, Wyatt sat her down to tell her what he’d learned. She poured herself a cup of tea and settled in to listen.
“If it wasn’t beer, it’d be something else,” he said, going over a theory he’d been developing. “Everybody’s addicted to something—drugs, medicines, food, even religion. That might be the worst one of all. Even some old-timer who spends all day carving wooden ducks doesn’t give a shit about carving or ducks. Sometimes it’s because he watched an army buddy blown to bits in front of his eyes.”
Dawnell stirred her tea. “Fair enough,” she said. “Let’s talk about your reasons.”
In an instant the notion came unstrung. Try as he might, he couldn’t think of a single one.
* * * *
Along Wyatt’s route, the broken towns linger in their dreary infirmity, each with its unkempt wooden churches, erector-set water towers and long-abandoned five-and-dimes. When he reaches Crane Prairie he turns at its single traffic light and idles into the crumbling downtown. All but a few of the quaint brick buildings are boarded up, the commerce moving south long ago with the coming of the Interstate. Pickups fill the spaces around Swede’s Steakhouse. Inside, a menagerie of mounted beasts, all horns and fangs, peers down from the walls. A mountain goat sports Ray-Bans, a cigarette tucked in its hardened lips. The bartender draws Wyatt a foamy beer.
Hours later, Simms enters with a flourish, tossing back the hood of a fur-trimmed parka, stamping snow from his boots. “Damn! The stuff you see when ya ain’t got a gun,” he yells. Farmhands and implement peddlers and big-haired women look toward Wyatt, who feels a sudden chill, imagines himself in their cross-hairs. Simms throws an arm around Wyatt, introduces Darla, tall and square-shouldered, her Nordic presence magnified by a red down duster and riding boots. Wyatt needs a long glance to take her all in.
Simms grins. “Where’s the little woman?” he asks.
“Home with the kid. Just passing through. Wondering what you were up to these days.”
The three take a booth, where a robust barmaid deposits a pitcher and frosted mugs. Simms pours a round, his eyes swimming as if he’s already had a few, and starts telling stories. Darla hangs her coat and scarf on the rack of an elk, drapes a thick blond braid alongside dramatic cleavage.
“I got pissed off this morning and decided to get the hell out,” Wyatt says. “I don’t know what’s going to hit me when I get home.”
Simms laughs and slaps the table. Darla eyes him sideways, runs a finger around the rim of her glass. “This fool could have had all the chicks,” Simms tells her. “Look at him. Had to fall for the first one I fixed him up with.”
They finish one pitcher, then another. Cold creeps in the doorway as the place fills up. Darla feeds the jukebox and pulls Simms to his feet to shuffle with her around the hardwood floor, lifting his hand from her ass when he starts clowning. Wyatt backs against the wall, stretches a leg across the seat, his appetite gone. He notices a woman, thin and wiry, wearing a leather jacket and sweatpants. She stands with her back to the glowing woodstove, wine glass in hand. Her raven hair is thick and bunched, her dark, narrow face obscured by owlish glasses. Darla steps out of Simms’s grasp and leans toward her to whisper. When the song ends, they bring her to the table. “Wyatt,” says Simms with a wink, “this here’s Mel.”
Wyatt, revived, hears himself introduced as Simms’s lifelong buddy, a big-shot contractor. He banters with Mel and buys tequilas all around, and when Simms and Darla rise to dance again he nudges her from the booth. The floor crowds quickly, and he slides his hand to the small of her back. She gives a jerk and mashes against him. “Whoa!” she says, “Sorry. I’ve been getting a tattoo and it’s still a little tender back there.”
She grabs his wrist, drops his hand lower. “That side’s OK,” she says, catching his eye, pressing against him during the dance, her perfume lingering under his chin after the music stops.
Wyatt orders another round and pulls Mel into the booth beside him. He lights a cigarette and shakes the match until it smokes. When turns to Mel, she’s holding a cigarette and waiting. His matchbook’s empty.
Darla holds a lighter a cross the table, “Here you go, Melania,” she says.
“Melania?” Wyatt says, looking her over. “That’s one I never heard before.”
“It’s Spanish,” Mel says, her dark eyes steady and expressionless.
“I get it now,” he says, nodding. “Kinda like Melanie then. It’s a pretty name.”
“Not Melanie,” she says, pulling the empty matchbook from his hand and writing her name in capital letters, handing it to him to read. “MELANIA,” she repeats. As he’s reading, she plucks the matchbook away, lowers her eyelids and scribbles some more—a phone number under the name—and hands it back. Wyatt smiles and tucks it into his pocket. Later, on the dance floor, he lets his cheek rest against hers. His breath stops; he’s never cheated on Dawnell. Mel brushes her lips across his. “Let’s go get some air,” she whispers.
They jog through a biting wind to her Suburban. She drives a few blocks and parks in the shadows of a railroad overpass, leaving the motor on to run the heater. From a kit in the glove box she sorts out some gadgets and stuffs a brass pipe with a pinch of marijuana. Soon he’s giddy and daring, tasting tequila and smoke on the tip of her tongue.
“Can I see it?” he whispers. She draws back and looks up at him. “The tattoo,” he says. “What is it?”
She turns her back toward him and slides up her blouse, revealing the coils of an ornate dragon. Feeling daring, he presses her shirt even higher, unhooks her bra, encounters a swirl of vivid hues and scaly ferocity. Her welted skin rises under a green leg and a row of demonic fingers tipped with curved black claws. He’s never touched a tattoo, never seen one this close. “My god!” he says. “How far does it go?”
She takes off her glasses, turns on the overhead light, gets her knees under her and slips down the sweatpants, revealing a curling reptilian tail adorning her right buttock. “That’s amazing,” he says, tracing the outline with his
finger.
“Hurry,” she whispers, wagging her hips, pressing against him. “It’s cold.”
“Here?” he says.
She looks back at him, her face inverted, framed in her armpit. The dashboard lights glitter in her eyes. “We can’t go to my house,” she says. “I got kids.”
Wyatt slips out of his jacket, pulls at his belt, loosens the buckle. The dragon appears to writhe on the dusky canvas of her skin. Wyatt’s throat tightens. Bursts of light fill his eyes, and he slumps backward against the door.
Mel turns her face toward him. “You feeling OK, sweetie? You don’t look so good.”
“It’s just the weed...the combination,” he says, blinking. “I need a minute.” He leans across her, resting his head for a moment between her shoulder blades. After taking a few breaths, he puts his palms on her shoulders and lets them slide down the curves of her waist. “I’m not a big fan of tattoos,” he says, “but I could get used to this.”
She lowers her face until her cheek rests against the seat, lifts her rump again. “What do you got against tattoos?” she says.
He ponders an explanation, his thoughts growing vivid and disordered. “Nothing, really. I guess I’m just kinda old-fashioned,” he says. “They’re OK, but I’d never want my daughter to get one, you know? There’s nothing skankier than some old grandma with a tattoo that’s gone all faded and blue and shit.”
Mel stiffens. She turns to face him, glaring. “Skanky?” she says. “Really?”
Wyatt looks at her dumbly. Her hand flicks and he flinches, turning his face aside. He expects a slap, but she catches him high on the cheekbone with a hard fist, lands a second one on his nose before he can cover up. His nostril lets go a gush of blood. She brings her feet around, the sweat pants still at her knees, and begins kicking at him. “Fuck you, you bastard,” she says. “Who do you think you are?”
Wyatt, startled by the onslaught, grabs for the door handle and tumbles onto the street. She throws his coat after him. The Suburban drops into gear with the engine winding, tires screeching as she drives away.
Wyatt’s head swims. A gust of cold prairie wind cuts through his thin clothing. He picks up a dented can from the gravel and throws it after her. “What the hell kinda name is that?” he yells, his ragged voice echoing from the abutments.
Wyatt feels his left eye swelling shut. He holds a finger alongside his nose and walks out to the main road, following the street lights back toward the tavern’s rainbow of neon. It’s near midnight and the streets are empty. Simms and Darla are still in their booth; she’s nuzzling him as he holds a cigarette over the table.
Simms looks up. “Jesus, Big Boy,” he says. “What the hell happened to you?”
Darla stares at Wyatt. “Where’s Melania?” she says.
“The bitch went crazy,” he says. “I swear, I never touched her.”
Darla gets up and trots across the dance floor, punching numbers into her cell phone.
Simms howls and bangs the table. A few sullen drunks look over from the bar. “This is too goddamn good, Ames,” Simms says. “You better take that shiner home to Mama. Looks to me like you done screwed the pooch around here.”
* * * *
Battered and despondent, Wyatt drives toward the freeway and buys a bottle of bourbon at a truck stop counter just before 1 o’clock. He checks into a room that smells of bird dogs and cigarettes, the paper bag tucked under his arm. He listens awhile to the low whine of freeway traffic before turning on the TV. A long swallow of whiskey lingers warm in his throat. He tips back the bottle again, and his chest fills with a hollow ache.
After sleeping awhile, he awakens on top of the bed, shivering. A train horn blares; rail cars clatter in the night air. The television glows. “You’ll have flatter abs in seven days,” says a perky, spandexed woman. CALL NOW! blinks in neon orange across her breasts.
He sees himself in the mirror next to the closet, the image startling. His eye is puffy and blued; a crust of dried blood clings to his upper lip. He wets a washcloth and cleans himself up. Finding the bottle standing open, he caps it and drops it into the trash. He checks out, fills a pair of coffee cups, turns up the country radio, and drives hard through the darkness with nearly 300 miles between him and home.
When the morning sun begins rising behind him, he’s fit to burst, and pulls off at an interchange for a break. Nearby sits a small wrecked building near a grove of trees. Planks cover the windows; daylight sifts through holes in the roof. Inside, tires lean against the walls. Empty beer bottles, some of them in shards, litter the floor, along with heavy gear wheels, rusty farm tools and the hard iron teeth of machinery built for ripping up the ground. In one corner a fire has burned through the floor, climbed the wall, and charred a broad smudge across the ceiling. Wyatt walks over and uses the hole as a urinal.
When he’s finished he steps back and begins looking around. At the back of the building the floor rises two steps higher across the width of the room. Ornate arches top the boarded-up window frames. A shaft of sunlight illuminates the back wall, where four bolts emerge in the shape of a cross. Wyatt wonders how long it’s been since he’s been inside a church. He stands in the center aisle and looks up at the ceiling, feeling weary and ill but overtaken by this sudden concealed majesty. His carpenter’s eye admires how the rows of heavy, tight-grained beams intersect precisely across the peak of the roof. He faces the space where the altar once stood and lets his mind settle, closing his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he can see Dawnell in her wedding gown, Simms in his dark jacket and tie. Within moments, he’s among people he hasn’t seen in years, their voices joined in a soothing murmur—old church folks who knew his parents, his Sunday school teacher, friends from his childhood baseball team. He’s a kid again, airy and disembodied, and the voices, consoling, fill him with a sense of yearning. “Mister?” one them says.
Wyatt opens his eyes and turns around. An old man stands between him and the door, bundled in grimy insulated coveralls and a hat with dangling ear flaps. He’s short and thick, his face puffy and etched with age. “Mister?”
Wyatt stares at him until his head clears, murmurs, “It’s a church.”
The man looks at him steadily, his hands thrust into his pockets. “I know what it is, pal,” he says. “This here’s my property.”
Wyatt gathers himself, brushes his clothes and squares his shoulders. “Then I guess I owe you an apology. I just came in to look around.”
The man’s look softens. “I get a lot of that—photographers and such. But the kids come in and monkey around too. I’d padlock it but for the cemetery. You got family up there?”
“No. I didn’t see it. Is there a cemetery too?”
The old man grins and folds his arms. “Out by the windbreak,” he says. “You can’t haul off a cemetery, can you?” He tells Wyatt how a half-century earlier the congregation had moved the church, built a new one in town, taken away the steeple and the pews and the stained glass. A few of the old-timers, he says, still tend the graves in the tiny fenced burial ground.
“You come in off the freeway?” he asks.
“I’m heading home to Scottsbluff,” Wyatt says, assuming his businessman’s voice. He finds it a comfort to speak with someone sober, someone he can understand. He talks about places he’s seen during his travels: abandoned houses, ghost farms 20 miles from the nearest towns, sprawling dirt-scratch ranches in the treeless Sandhills grassland, where cattlemen pull winter calves in the hard crystal air, a hundred miles from good medicine. “It fills me with wonder,” he says. “And a place like this, it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like.”
The man takes his hands from his pockets and puts a match to a wooden pipe. He sits on the edge of a tire and gestures for Wyatt to join him. He tells a story about farming before the Depression, when some of the rural counties held twice as many families, about squatters on homestead claims struggling through barren winters before hard times drove them of
f. He pauses and waits for Wyatt to look up. “Looks to me you got your own hard-luck story to tell.”
Wyatt remembers his mangled face in the motel mirror and touches his swollen eye. “Yeah, I guess I partied a bit last night.”
The cold settles in through the roof as the wind picks up, swinging the door on a rusty hinge. “Thing you gotta remember,” the old man says, “it wasn’t like today. A lot of them pioneers left the cities or the old countries to come out here—on foot, some of ’em—and lived in dugouts in the ground, or in shacks made of stacked prairie sod.” He catches Wyatt in a level gaze and taps the cinders out of his pipe. “Imagine that, son. Live your entire life without leaving your mark, not even a headstone to remember you by.”
Wyatt shivers. He entertains a stray thought about offering to fix up the building, but lets it go. He stands and shakes the old man’s hand. “I won’t keep you any longer,” he says. “It was real good talking with you. I hope you keep this old place going.”
The man chuckles. “Tell you the truth, I ought to burn the damn thing down. To me it’s just storage, and more trouble than it’s worth,” he says. “It ain’t been a real church in years.”
* * * *
Back in the truck, Wyatt waits for the heat to build and rubs his hands over the dash. He yearns to be home, to get himself organized again and get back to work. Back on the freeway, he begins an inventory of plans. He’ll make things right. He’ll plant a tree for Dawnell—that’ll come first. After that he’ll start painting, maybe paint the whole place a new color, or a palette of new colors. He imagines doors that he’ll shave, windows that he’ll seal, cabinets he can fit with new handles and hinges.
He shifts his hands atop the wheel, rolls his shoulders to loosen up. He passes farm trucks on the rural highway, drivers lifting a gloved hand off the wheel in greeting. The sun breaks through the dull clouds, casting an amber glow on the snow-dusted grasslands. The quiet order of the furrowed fields fills his chest like raw oxygen. He veers south to the freeway to make better time, darts around semis, passes the twin stacks of the coal-fired generators at Sutherland. The hours pass in a quiet frenzy until he rolls past Chimney Rock, past Scottsbluff’s smoking sugar factory. He speed-dials home, gets no answer.