Bone Fire (15 page)

“It’s me, Rita. You don’t have to act like you believe your own bullshit.”

“I believe if you were more in touch with your higher self, this is something you’d understand.”

“What I understand is that Rodney got a wild hair up his ass and decided he wanted to play father for a month.”

“The man has his own children.”

“So, this was your idea?”

“Mrs. Rodney thought it was a good idea too. After I explained the situation to her.”

“Jesus Christ, Rita.”

“Her name’s Claire. Unlike you she’s a person of deep compassion.”

He could hear the hiss of a car passing in the street. “I can’t believe you did this to your own kid.”

“Mostly it’s important for Rodney. Growth-wise, that is.”

“Why don’t you just say you wanted to punish him for knocking you up.”

“I was never meant to bear a child. I don’t have the hips for it, or the temperament.”

“Really?”

“Bye now,” she said.

He snapped the phone shut, tossing it on the dash and sliding the seat back. He thought he’d sit just long enough to allow the sound of her voice to drain out of his mind, but he didn’t want to be out here all night, and the kitchen lights were still on at McEban’s.

He stepped up onto the porch and looked in through the window. The aluminum shelving from the refrigerator was tilting out of the sink, the countertops stacked with dishes. He let the door slam coming in and stood in the mudroom. McEban was on his knees on the floor. He’d stripped off his T-shirt, his pale torso as thickly muscled as an ape’s.

He sat back on his heels. “How was the village?”

“Hopping.”

“Were they showing anything good at the movies?” There was a bucket of soapy water at his side.

“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”

“Jimmy Stewart was in that, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, he was. They’re going to play an old Western one day every week all summer long. Mostly for the tourists, I guess. Will you go to bed if I help you?”

McEban looked around as though gauging the amount of work left. “I think I would.”

“You wouldn’t sneak back down and start another project?”

“I believe I’d be satisfied along those lines.”

He bent to the floor again, and Paul slipped his shoes off, tiptoed across the worn linoleum and pulled a rag from a box full of them underneath the sink. His eyes watered from the stink of the cleaning solution.

“I’m going to Africa,” he said.

McEban quit scrubbing, still hunched forward on his hands and knees, his back wet as the floor, sweat dripping from his nose.
He sat back again, drawing an arm across his face. “Where to in Africa?”

“Uganda. For an NGO.”

“Good for you.”

“You know what NGO stands for?”

“Nongovernmental organization.” He reached out to wipe a spot he’d missed. “I don’t know why I know that, but I do. You going to be gone for the rest of your life?”

“For a year.”

McEban slipped a can of Copenhagen from a back pocket, pinched out a dab and settled it in his lip. “Do you think the boy’s all right?”

“I think he’d have called if he wasn’t.”

“I’m worried he’ll feel miserable and just hang on until he can’t stand it anymore.”

“Like you would.”

“Yeah, like that.” He took a cloth out of the bucket, wrung it out and wiped off his face and chest, then dropped it back in the bucket.

“I miss him too,” Paul said.

McEban got up and stepped to the sink, pulled the shelving out and emptied the bucket. “Maybe Kenneth and I’ll go see a movie when he gets home. I guess he’d like anything with horses in it.” He was rinsing the bucket with the spray nozzle.

“I hope you’re not taking it personally, but she doesn’t give a fuck about anybody.”

McEban shut the water off, turning the bucket upside down in the basin. “If you mean Rita you ought to say her name.”

“Who else would I mean?”

McEban was watching a miller moth circling the light over the sink. His hands and face were so darkly tanned it looked like those parts of him came from another race.

“Is Griff going with you?”

“I don’t think so. What’ll you do if Kenneth grows up like me? Takes off for some other continent?”

He was remembering nights as a boy, waking from a bad dream, and McEban coming in and lying down next to him, holding him until he got back to sleep. He used to wonder if the man sat up at night just waiting to help.

“He told me the other day he’d like to keep on here.”

“Isn’t that what I said when I was his age?”

“I guess, when I’ve thought about it, I thought he might stick around. Maybe until I died.” He started stacking the plates back into the cupboard.

“You know that’s fucked up, don’t you?”

“Not entirely I don’t. You ought to take the digital camera with you, send back some pictures.” He smiled, the tendons standing out in his neck, his ears lifting slightly. “Maybe one of Lake Victoria if you got down there.”

He lifted the bucket out of the sink and the strainer basket out of the drain, spitting a stream of tobacco juice against the porcelain and then running water over it. “You think you’re going to be okay without Griff?”

“I don’t know.”

The moth fluttered against McEban’s neck and he snatched it out of the air, held it for a moment loosely in his fist and then threw it hard against a cupboard door, and it fell quivering on the countertop. “I hate those little sons of bitches.”

“Especially when they fly around your ears.”

They could hear the horses moving in the pasture outside the window.

“I’m scared shitless.” Paul pinched the moth up by a wing and dropped it in the disposal side of the sink. “I guess I came up here tonight to say something about that.”

“You mean generally?”

“No, I mean when Griff and I start fighting about something.”

McEban wet a paper towel, wiping the gray smudge off the cupboard. “I used to feel like that sometimes.”

“Should you have said ‘Rita’?”

“Before her. There was a woman I cared about who lives in Nebraska now.”

A horse snorted, and then another, and they could hear them pounding away toward the far end of the pasture.

“Then it goes away? Feeling like this?”

“Yeah, it does. But you miss it.”

J
EAN HAD BEEN THINKING
about winter. Not winter in Wyoming, but in a casita in Santa Fe or Albuquerque. Maybe Tucson. Red tiled roof, doors and shutters painted the color of blue ink. Walled patio. An arbor of thatched ocotillo, borders of cholla and yucca. She was staring out at her garden, thinking what a relief it would be to live in a place where she wouldn’t be tempted to grow a single goddamn vegetable. Drought-resistant, is what she’s after. She’d started a new life once in Florida and just let that yard go to a weedy sandlot. She’d liked it there.

Last night she Googled the exact times of the mid-December dawns and dusks in each city, and at the very least she was going to gain forty-plus minutes of daylight. Almost fifty-five in Tucson. It was easier to start over in warm weather. A piece of cake to get up and get on with your life when you don’t have to plug your car in so the engine block won’t freeze.

Her friend Sally once said living through a Wyoming winter was evidence of low self-esteem. Thanksgiving, she thought, would be a good time to leave.

She tore the foil back on the Marlboro Lights, tapping the pack against her wrist while watching Griff drive in and park.

She held the water bottle up in the light and shook it hard, the ice rattling against the dark plastic sides. It was one of those new
bottles with a soft plastic nipple you could bite into to suck the liquid up, so you could drink and drive without having to tip your head back. She’d filled this one with Smirnoff.

“Hey,” the girl said. She set a small wooden box on the table,
House of Windsor
in red lettering on top.

“Hey yourself. Can I have one of your cigars?”

“There’s just pictures inside.”

Jean was thinking of Crane at breakfast this morning. How he’d stared at her, the sadness in his face so palpable it had made her want to scream. “You still ride around with your stepdaddy in his copmobile?”

“Not for awhile.”

“But you’re fine with each other?”

“Sure.” She preferred her mother like this. Sweetly buzzed. “That’s not the kind of plastic bottle that gives you cancer, is it?”

“No, it’s the safe kind.” Jean shook the ice again. “I checked.”

“I might make a drink myself.”

“There’s orange juice inside if you want a mixer.” She blew a plume of smoke toward the kitchen door.

When Griff came back out her mother had opened the cigar box and taken out the wedding picture of herself and Griffin.

“Isn’t this a peach?” She tossed the picture down on the table. “God, I didn’t know shit then, except that your dad was a catch.”

“Can I leave this stuff over here?”

Jean slumped back in her chair. “Worst mistake I ever made in my life was letting you stay out there with that old man after Crane and I got married.” The sweet buzz was souring. “I know damn well it’s why you gave up on me. Us not living together.”

“Einar burned a bunch of stuff.” There were kids in the yard next door running through a sprinkler, laughing. “Some of it was mine.”

“No shit.” The good mood returned. “What you ought to do is move out now. You get stuck there after he turns into a total nutcase, it’ll look worse. If you leave then, I mean.”

Griff stirred her drink with a finger and Jean straightened her legs, pulling her summer dress up mid-thigh.

“At least I’ve still got good calves.” She looked up smiling, boxing her hands in front of her face like she was holding a camera, making a clicking sound. “Wyoming snapshot. Mother and daughter getting hammered in the middle of the day. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

“Einar’s sister came out from Chicago.”

“Marin?”

“Yes.”

Jean reached over to pat her daughter’s hand. “I think it’s wonderful you’re taking in new patients for your nursing home, dear. Makes me proud, being a dropout nurse’s assistant myself.”

“I didn’t know you quit.”

“It’s the shit and piss they don’t tell you about when you sign up. Bodily fluids. That’s what it comes down to.” She sucked from her bottle.

“She came out to help with Einar.”

“The prodigal lesbian leading the blind.” Jean stubbed the cigarette out, using the butt to rake the ash up against the sides. “I’m thinking of moving. Maybe the southwest this time.”

“You and Crane?”

“I’m afraid your step-buddy has been out screwing another pooch.”

Griff was staring at the caragana at the border of the yard, grown up thick with yellow blossoms. “I don’t think he’s the type.” She was trying to count the times she’d moved with her mother. She could remember the house in Florida. The one in Iowa.

“Well, he sure as hell ain’t fucking me.”

A magpie dove at the bird feeder and a vireo hit the screen, bouncing to the ground.

Griff stood up to watch the little olive-gray bird right itself, shaking its head. “Do you have a cat?”

“We’re out of cats.” Jean leaned forward with her elbows on the table. “Is this too much information for you all at once?”

“I just think you’re wrong.”

“Oh, God, it’s you, isn’t it?”

“Not funny, Mother.”

Jean sat up straighter. “What if he’s fucking somebody
older
than me? Wouldn’t that suck shit?”

The stunned bird took a step, falling onto its side again.

“Can I ask you something?”

“As long as it doesn’t have anything to do with what’s wrong with me.”

“Do you think my work’s any good?”

“You mean your skeleton thingies?”

“Yes.”

Jean stared at the raw wood in the ceiling, considering. “Well, they’re a lot more interesting than gnomes, or jockeys, or Greek goddesses. Did I tell you I saw a five-foot-high angel at the tree farm in Sheridan?”

“Lawn ornaments?”

“Which one am I supposed to be?”

“I don’t have anyone in particular in mind when I make them.”

“You know I don’t know how to talk about art.” She leaned forward, staring down again at her wedding photograph. “But I do know what this is.” She was tapping a finger on the table. “What you’ve got right there is a picture of the last time your mother was feeling lucky.”

H
ELEN PARKED
by the office and the only person in the lobby was a stocky boy, maybe twenty-five, with a bad complexion. He was watching a Rockies game on the plasma TV in the breakfast nook and, when he noticed her, hurried around behind the counter.

“I’m Mrs. Johnson,” she said. “I think my husband already checked us in.”

The gold-colored nametag over his shirt pocket read
Tyler
.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “He said you’d be coming in separately.”

He coded a key card, slid it across the counter and smoothed out a map of the complex, bending over it with a red pen and drawing a line around to the back of the westernmost wing. “If you park around here, it’ll be hard to see your car from the highway.” He was smiling—leering, really—and staring unguardedly at her breasts.

She folded the map. “Is your manager on duty?”

The smile dropped away, along with the color from his face. “Yes, ma’am. She’s in the back.”

“You want me to have a talk with her about this attitude you’ve got going on?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then try not being such a smutty little shithead. Okay?”

He lowered his voice. “Yes, ma’am.”

She drove around to the back of the Spring Hill Suites, spotted Crane’s pickup and parked beside it. When she let herself in, the drapes were drawn and she stood there blinking.

“What did you tell him?” He was sitting in a chair by the table in the little efficiency kitchen.

“I said I was going to spend the afternoon at the Sanctuary. It’s a spa up on Twenty-fourth. I said I was going to get a massage and something called a Vichy Shower Body Polish.”

“They have a pool here.”

“What did you tell Jean?”