In Open Spaces (20 page)

We all sat with one ear aimed toward the kitchen, our mouths sealed shut with fear. Dad looked awful tired. We heard a steady drone, Jack’s voice, mingling with the sounds of washing dishes. I finally resorted to the only thing I could think of.

“Wonder how long this heat’s going to last.”

The others merely nodded, and more minutes of quiet followed in what I think may be the only time in the history of Montana that even the weather failed as a topic of conversation. Finally, the silence broke. A rising, angry declaration bellowed from the kitchen, punctuated by the crash of a dish shattering against the floor. We jumped up, running to the kitchen.

Jenny stood with her back against the sink, her hands clenched into tight fists at her waist. Her mouth was pinched, and her face, which was generally white as chicken feathers, was dark red right up to her
hairline. Mom stood between her and Jack, with a butcher knife in her hand, aimed right at Jack’s chest. I couldn’t breathe.

I don’t think Jack even saw the knife. He still had that stupid grin on his face, and he looked right past Mom, at Jenny.

“Jenny, darling, are you rejecting my invitation?” he asked.

Dad grabbed Jack from behind.

“Hey,” Jack muttered, looking truly confused. “What’s the matter?”

“Let’s take you on home,” Dad said. “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

“Oh, no,” Jack said. “I ain’t ready to go home yet.”

“Yeah, well, I think it’d be a good idea if you did anyway,” Dad insisted, his face straining.

“Jenny, do you want me to go home?” Jack raised his forehead and smiled at Jenny, trying to look sweet but falling far short of that objective.

“Shut up,” Mom muttered. “Just shut your mouth, Jack.”

My guts were tangled up like a tumbleweed as I stood watching my brother make a fool of himself. Part of me wanted to throw him to the floor and pummel some awareness into that murky brain. But he seemed so oblivious to his actions, and to the world around him, that he was almost too pathetic to be angry at. I took a deep breath through my nose.

“Come on, Jack.” I stepped up and took him by the arm, and Dad and I started to lead him toward the door. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Jenny, you don’t wanna go to the dance with that cockeyed jokester, do you?”

That was more than even Steve could tolerate. He started after Jack. Bob and Gary caught him, but Steve strained against their grasp, his veins bulging in his temple and his neck.

Through his teeth, he muttered, “Jack, I hope to God this is whiskey talk—that you don’t know what you’re saying.” Steve’s eye jumped from side to side as if it was being held back. “Otherwise…otherwise…”

Jack grinned. “Whiskey don’t talk. This is my mouth sayin’ you’re a
cockeye.” Jack fixed a look on Steve that sent a chill through us all. It was a look that told us he was clearly too far gone to have any idea what he was saying. His eyes were apparently looking, in his mind, at something besides people—at some kind of vicious obstacles that stood in the way of getting what he wanted. He clearly hated us all at that moment.

This awareness seemed to hit each of us at the same time and together as we stared at the wild face, and the desperate, hateful eyes. Because the nervous, pumping energy that had been coursing through the room just minutes before melted away in an instant. Even Steve’s anger abated, and his dad and Bob let go of him. We all stood looking at Jack, then not looking at him. We looked at our feet, because looking at him, or at each other, was too painful.

“Jesus,” Jack declared, chuckling. “Who died?” He felt like an empty suit in my hands, but he shocked both Dad and me when he suddenly jerked away, lunged forward and ran from the house, slamming the door.

We were too shocked to respond at first, but when we heard Jack’s truck start up and spit gravel as he roared from the yard, I thought of his condition, and rushed out into the warm summer air. Crickets chirped, and mosquitoes whirred around my ears, but Jack’s truck was already a mile down the road. As irrational as it was, I grabbed a rock and heaved it in that direction. Nate bolted off toward the rock, then stopped and sniffed the ground.

Back inside, the mood was somber.

“Steve, Jenny,” Dad said, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” His lips pursed.

“George,” Steve said. “You know we understand. He’s out of his head with the stuff. Nothing you could do. Nothing any of us could.”

“You couldn’t of stopped him with a firing squad,” Art said.

“Well, I shouldn’t have even brought the stuff out. I know it gets to him.”

“Forget it, George,” Mom insisted. “We had a good day. If there was ever a time when it seemed like a good idea, it was tonight.” She laid her hand on Dad’s back, and his body surrendered to her comfort.

“You want us to drive by the old house, see if he’s out there?” Gary offered.

“No, no. If he’s out there, he can just sleep it off. Him and the cats,” Mom said.

This brought a weak, guilty smile to every face.

I don’t know that a big, wonderful house full of people who love each other could ever be lonelier than ours was that night. After our guests left, we sat in the living room for a few minutes, but I don’t think we could stand the sight of each other looking so sad and tired.

So we retreated to our rooms, each of us taking with us thoughts of what we might have done to prevent this terrible turn. I lay in my bed, staring out at the black sky, and finding the same darkness in my mind as I tried for the life of me to figure out how a man who was my brother, a man who grew up in the same house, with the same people, could be so different—so unhappy, so full of mistrust. How could he look at the life we had, the gifts the land had so abundantly showered our little family with, and find anything but good in it? I couldn’t figure it out. And this didn’t even include Rita.

I decided to check on her. I crept from my bed and tiptoed into Muriel’s room, where they had moved Rita. She slept with a peaceful, calm expression. She knew nothing about what had happened, of course, and I sat wondering how she would feel about this latest escapade. What would it take for her to lose patience with him, I wondered. Muriel slept quietly in the next bed. And the scene took me back for a moment. To the last night I had reason to sit in the girls’ bedroom. The night Katie died. I remembered her knee rising slightly, time after time, and thumping against the mattress. I remembered her face when
she’d reached the house, all flushed and soaked with sweat from running all that way.

And something occurred to me for the first time. I wondered why Katie had been the one who ran home that evening. Why didn’t Jack run back to tell us that they’d found George? He could have covered the ground in half the time, and he knew that Katie had been sick for a week. And a horrifying thought hit me. It had never occurred to me before that night that Jack actually had a motive for killing George. Because he would be the next in line to take over the ranch, Jack actually had a motive. I dropped my head to Rita’s side, resting it on the mattress next to her.

Her arm rested on top of the blankets, and although I felt funny about it, I reached out and took her hand. And as I closed my eyes, I couldn’t stop myself from sorting through the facts. I realized that this could explain Jack’s disappearances. It could explain his attitude. It could explain a lot, when I really let myself think about it. But still—I couldn’t believe it.

I heard a noise, a shuffle. And I looked up. Rita hadn’t moved. I looked at Muriel. She hadn’t moved either, and she was still asleep. I heard it again. And I looked over at the doorway. And there stood little George, looking like a tiny version of his father, his eyes wide and moist. I wasn’t sure what to do. I let go of Rita’s hand. George started walking toward me, and I wondered if I should leave. But when he reached my side, he leaned his head against my shoulder. He rested his head on my shoulder and held it there.

T
here are a few events that can’t be exaggerated—that no matter how much people talk or write about them, the full force of the experience can’t be appreciated unless you were there.

From what I’ve read and imagined about living through a war, the Depression came as close to that particular hell as anything in terms of taking hold of people’s senses and shaking the life out of them, day after day, until we weren’t always sure where the sun would rise the next morning.

I guess death has a way of affecting you whether you know it or not. With our livestock toppling over every day, we had to become indifferent toward death to prevent it from overwhelming our spirit, and our will to survive. Carcasses were strewn everywhere, the bones pushing through withered hides, their necks twisted in unnatural positions. It was as if they, in their last moment, noticed something that
would save them, reached for it, only to die a tongue’s length away. There were also dead people, some walking beside the road, some showing up at the door, paper-thin hat in hand, begging to work for a meal or a bed for the night. And although we obliged them, often even giving them a few days’ work, it felt as if we were only delaying the inevitable.

There seemed to be a part of us all that was dead, the part that would normally take note of death and ponder it for a moment, or feel something. It was as if this was energy we could not afford to use, as we had to work harder than ever just trying to keep ourselves and our livestock alive. As the grass became thinner, and the locusts became thicker, we had to rotate our stock more frequently, and make sure their sources of water hadn’t dried up. And as our hay became less plentiful, we had to find creative ways to keep them fed in winter.

Our family was more fortunate than most. Ironically, I think George’s and Katie’s deaths played a role in that success. Because we tried to forget those deaths by working like hell, we had a little more reserve than most. Dad, Bob, and I also worked extra jobs during the Depression years, just to get by. We worked on the road crews up by Alzada, and Dad even tended bar from time to time. We were able to afford feed. But I heard that some folks had to peel bark from trees to feed their sheep.

We had to keep moving, and for this reason, as much death as there was around us, we were also more alive than ever. Both things were true, at once and together, and both were merely a result of being scared as hell. And it was clear that what killed a lot of people, in body or in spirit, was that they sat down and stopped. Like someone lost in a blizzard. They gave in to the fear, or to the loneliness.

The interesting thing about our county was that by the time the Depression hit, we had already experienced a difficult decade. In the twenties, half the banks in Montana had closed, rainfall had been well below average, livestock and grain prices were down, and many of the
honyockers that inundated our little corner of the state had gone against conventional wisdom and used farming methods such as a machine that pounded the ground until the topsoil blew away with the slightest wind. Much of the topsoil in our county was gone before the Depression even started. Because of this, the amateurs, the less dedicated, the disillusioned, were mostly gone by 1929. Most of us who were left were survivors already, so we knew what it took.

But if we had known in 1929 that the drought was going to last another ten years, we could have set our fields on fire, and shot three quarters of our stock. It would have had the same effect.

We took four steps back for each step forward. But every now and then, one foot crept out and made a mark in the dust just ahead of the last one. An inch or two felt a lot like a mile. And each of these tiny successes seemed to come just when we needed it. Just when we were about ready to sit down. Every time the sky surrendered a few drops of moisture, or the price of beef rose a penny or two, we held that in the front of our minds, running it over time and again for confirmation, and straining our spirits to will this to be the point where things would turn.

We had to believe that each little step represented the beginning of the end. And to help ourselves along, we had to create a few bright spots of our own. A lot of people got married, and too many babies were born. A woman in Capitol had eight babies during the thirties, and told anyone who would listen that she was trying to force a little mercy from God. Just doing her part.

Soon after Rita’s accident, and Jack’s disappearance, the Stillwell girl that Bob wasn’t sweet on became a regular guest at our dinner table. And even more often, Bob spent the evening calling on her. On the nights that he didn’t eat at Stillwells’, or she wasn’t here, Bob would attack his plate as if he’d never eaten before, then sit in the living room, pretending to lounge around. His knee would bounce up and down as
if it was about to run out of the room on its own. And his eyes, which were already round, would get that wild, jerky look of someone who thought the law was after him. Finally, he would get up, stretch, and announce, to no one’s surprise, “Well, I think I’ll take a little drive.”

About the time he stopped trying to fool anyone, Helen went back to Spearfish, where she attended the teachers college. And I’ve never seen a good hand go bad so fast in all my life. Bob’s skill as a handyman saved his hide. Because once a week he ran some piece of equipment over a rock or into a ditch. After a few weeks of this, our team of horses even figured out that someone was in love. They’d get stubborn each time Bob took the reins, refusing to move. Thankfully, Helen came home most weekends, so he didn’t completely lose his head.

Helen finished school the following spring, and in a stroke of good fortune for Bob, the teacher at the Albion school decided to move back to Missouri, so Helen got the job. She and Bob courted for another year, at her insistence, and they took their vows on a beautiful May afternoon, when the tips of the grass were just beginning to green. We had a reception at our house, and there just happened to be a dance in Alzada that evening. Around nine o’clock, a string of honking vehicles, led by Bob and Helen, snaked the fifteen miles from our place to Alzada.